Confused indeed

Comments to the report Grazed and confused from the Food Climate Research Network.

I had high expectations on the report Grazed and confused, developed under the lead of Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network. I have been impressed by her previous research on many aspects of the food system and her capacity to go further than using lifecycle analyses to provide the Truth. Unfortunately this report doesn’t live up to my expectations. At all.

By and large, the conditions differ so much in different parts of the world, that the kind of generalisation this reports tries to make is rather pointless. It is like making a global report for “arable farming” and drawing general conclusions that farming is good or bad.

The introduction of the report is quite promising and balanced, but that balance is unfortunately lost in what follows. The authors state in the introduction that the report will only focus on the effects on the climate and not other aspects, good or bad, of livestock or grazing. Fair enough, but they mostly forget this when they report something slightly positive about grazing animals. That is often dismissed or relativized with other arguments about alternative land use or something else.

In the report one can read statements such as “while well-managed systems that are not implicated in deforestation certainly exist….” giving the impression that deforestation would be the norm. Such statements must be considered extremely biased since most grasslands are not the result of deforestation at least for hundred years.  

Admittedly definitions are difficult, and the report tries to clarify some things reasonably well in the start. But later on, the report is not helping with a clear line, but mixes discussions which are relevant for grass grown in croplands or dramatically altered pastures with native grasslands. They are very different and what is correct for one is not necessarily correct for the other. Grasslands in crop rotations (with grains etc.) can only meaningfully be discussed as part of such a cropping system.

The nature of grasslands differ enormously. By and large, most grasslands are located in places where the natural conditions are harsh. And a lot of the grasslands of the planet are not even grazed by domestic livestock. The alternative use of this grassland is not obvious. A recent assessment found that 2 billion hectares, i.e. less than 60% of the world’s grasslands, are grazed by domesticated livestock. Meanwhile there are certainly examples of very productive and very intensively used grasslands.

While this report has already been used by advocates as a support for that carbon sequestration in grassland is negligible, it is worth noting that the report clearly states that carbon sequestration can be significant, that grazing can increase sequestration and that under certain conditions grazed lands may sequester more carbon than forests.

*

Now to the more disturbing “facts” in the report.

The methane calculations don't consider the research of the Oxford colleague Myles Allen (2016)[i] which shows very clearly that the calculations for expressing methane in carbon dioxide equivalents hides a lot of information. For short-lived greenhouse gases the comparison with carbon dioxide based on a pulse of emissions gives a reasonably correct result only in a time span of a few decades. In the longer term (which this is all about), the more correct comparison is between a pulse of carbon dioxide and a constant rate in methane emissions. This means that “to achieve a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the very long term, net emissions of cumulative pollutants such as CO2 need to be reduced to zero, while emissions of SLCPs [of which methane is one, my comment] simply need to be stabilised.“ (quote from the research of Myles Allen and colleagues).  The authors do acknowledge this in the report, but they don’t seem to consider it in most parts of the report where they just use the extremely simplified ways of expressing methane in carbon equivalents.

This should be combined with

- that pastures are not expanding on the planet, as a matter of fact they have decreased last fifteen years (FAOSTAT).

- the number of grazing cattle have most likely also not increased. 

- the carbon sequestration In grasslands have most likely taken place over hundreds of years and even much longer. For example the prairies was converted from mineral gravel to thick fertile soils over a period of 10 000 years.  A lot of the stable carbon in grasslands is many thousand years old.[ii]

The analysis in the report of the balance between carbon sequestration and methane emissions is based on that there is a (ungrazed) grassland and now let us put a cow that didn't exist before on that grassland. Then we add methane emissions into the calculation and now we start to measure carbon sequestration. But the reality is that the cow was there before and its "pulse" of methane emissions already has happened; the same number of cows over a period of several decades don’t add methane to the atmosphere as equal amounts are released and broken down every year. And the carbon sequestration has been ongoing for hundreds of years.  Those things together makes the calculations in Grazed and confused -- just confused.   

In addition, the discussion on carbon sequestration is based on two other dubious and unsubstantiated assumptions.

A central argument in the report, and the basis for a most of the subsequent calculations, is that over time carbon sequestration will diminish and reach an equilibrium after “perhaps 30-70 years”. It does seems like a plausible assumption that sequestration will diminish over time, but the hard evidence of this is lacking (only one example is cited and this example has not even measured the actual carbon content), and even more so that the decline in the rate of sequestration would be so rapid as claimed. The report also contradicts itself by claiming that observed rates of carbon sequestration could be legacy effects of the lands much earlier conversion from arable to grassland. “Much earlier” must be a lot more than “perhaps 30-70 years”.

The report makes a big issue of the fact that carbon can be lost from the system if exposed to draught, fire or flooding. Of course it can, but this can happen regardless of if there are cows grazing or not. As a matter of fact, grazing animals can very often reduce the incidence of wildfires in dry landscapes. Many (also this report) suggest that grasslands can and should be converted to forests, but forests are certainly exposed to even more such events with fires and storm felling (75 million M3 of trees fell in the storm Gudrun in Sweden 2005). The fact that grasslands today have such great pool of carbon, more or less the same as forests[iii], shows that this objection carries little weight.

The calculations of carbon sequestration in the report are based on several weaknesses.

- Measurements of “carbon” are mostly only in the upper layer of soil, often the top 30 centimetres and sometimes as little as the top 10 cm. Most studies which have supplied the data for the report have been interested in changes in soil organic matter as a measure of soil fertility and not the potential for carbon sequestration. For that purpose the shallow measurements are quite OK. But the stable carbon fractions which can be stored over a long time are found deeper down. Admittedly the carbon content deeper down is lower, but it is a lot more stable. Grassland has a very high proportion of belowground biomass and deep roots, therefore the carbon stored by grasslands is likely to be distributed deeper than in arable land. According to Jackson et al 2017[iv], native grasslands allocate around 60 % of primary production to roots, croplands 10 % and forests 20 %.  

- Measuring carbon content in a specific layer of the soil and using that as a measure of carbon sequestration, omits what happens with the soil in total. Soil can grow “deeper”, by root activity and “higher” by accumulation of litter and dust on the top. This is how “soil” is made in the first place. One can very well sequester a lot of carbon in a soil while the carbon content 0-30 cm remains constant.  

- Measurements are mostly on “carbon” not differentiating between different forms of carbon the soil, while it is well known that there are only some fractions of carbon (humic acids) which are stable.

- The authors claim that carbon sequestration is most likely to take place in degraded soils, but the evidence for this is not at all conclusive. Many of the best soils in the world have been accumulating carbon for a very long term, and many of the poor soils have been poor for a very long time. From a practical farming perspective the experience is rather the opposite. A good soil can go on accumulating carbon for ages, while it is a lot harder, but not impossible, to increase soil organic matter in poor soils in poor climates. 

- Carbon sequestration is often, and by the authors, seen as having a direct relationship to nitrogen (N) availability. For instance, the data in figure 7 is calculated from N values and not from actual measurements of carbon. This assumption of some kind of simple relationship between N and C fluxes is unsubstantiated. For example, in analysing total N and C fluxes over 75 year Sochorova et al (2016) found that C content in soil in unfertilized hayfields was significantly higher than in plots where N fertilizer had been used.[v] In general, while N stimulate growth, it also stimulate above ground growth at the expense of below ground growth, and carbon below ground is much more likely to be stable in the long run. Increased N availability can also stimulate decomposition of carbon rich materials, something everybody making composts can easily witness.

*

The report deals very lightly with the topic of ruminant/grass interactions and gives the impression that the existence of ruminants in grasslands has little significance compared to non-grazed grasslands. The role of the manure falling on the field is mostly seen as a potential source of pollution. But this is a far too simplistic view of the very complex interactions in nature. For example, dung beetles and mycorrhiza play an important role, “In pastured livestock operations, particularly in the tropics, dung beetles help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and aid carbon sequestration in part by increasing grass growth, aerating soil, and delivering manure carbon to mineral surfaces (Slade et al. 2016)”[vi].

The figure 10 shows the theoretical relationships between stocking rates, methane emission and carbon sequestration. It shows that with a stocking rate of 0,5 cows long term net sequestration is possible (also with all the limitations discussed above), while it is impossible for higher stocking rates of 1 and 2 animals per hectare. If we divide the global grazing livestock (say of half a billion livestock units, which is probably a big exaggeration) with global grasslands of say 2.6 billion hectares, we get a stocking rate in the range of 0.2. Such low stocking rate would, with the authors own calculation, have the potential to sequester more carbon than the methane emissions. The authors include no such graph but instead shows the result for 0.5, 1 and 2 livestock units per hectare. But 2 livestock units per hectare is a density ten times higher than even a high estimate of average global grazing intensity.

The report claims that most extensive grazing systems are important sources of fossil fuel derived CO2 emissions. There are pastoralist systems that use no fossil fuel derived inputs whatsoever, apart from the odd veterinary medicine. Of course there are others which use fences and motorcycles. But it is hard to imagine that this could have any significance compared the massive amounts of fossil fuel used in agriculture for machinery, pumps, fertilizers, dryers etc.

*

We live in a world where the whole agriculture system is unsustainable, including the production of staple foods such as wheat and potatoes. By and large the whole system is driven by global markets and competition, massive use of chemical fertilizers, fossil fuels and pesticides, which in turn has created an enormous overproduction of agriculture crops. This unsustainable system is driving deforestation for palm oil, cattle grazing, cocoa, coffee or soybean cultivation. This unsustainable system is driving enormous waste, a rapid increase in chicken and pork consumption and obesity. This unsustainable system leads to massive emissions of greenhouse gases, massive pollution and loss of bio-diversity.

Grazing animals are not the big problem in the food system. As a matter of fact, grazing and other forms of traditional livestock management are endangered forms of agriculture in many parts of the world, simply because they can’t compete with industrial farming practices.  

A sustainable agriculture and food system will look different in different locations; after all, local adaptation is a key characteristic of any sustainable system. Therefore, the number of livestock and the ways they are integrated in the food system (and how much animals products that can be consumed) will differ enormously in the same way as it has done historically. Trying to conclude that pasturing is “bad” or that eating meat is “not sustainable” is pointless on a ´global level.

Both grasslands and forests can play an important role for carbon sequestration. Even arable land can sequester carbon, but currently they are mostly doing the opposite. There are big knowledge gaps about which methods work under which conditions, even if there are many pointers as to which processes are most efficient. There are also most likely trade-offs where carbon sequestration in the soil will be in conflict with carbon for use as food, paper, timber, feed. I wish the Food Climate Research Network would direct its energy into looking into how to improve carbon sequestration while enhancing bio-diversity without reducing the carbon available for use by human kind.  

---

[i] Allen MR, Fuglestvedt JS, Shine KP, Reisinger A, Pierrehumbert RT, Forster PM 2016:

New use of global warming potentials to compare cumulative and short-lived climate pollutants. Nature Climate Change  doi: 10.1038/nclimate2998

[ii] http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1880e/i1880e05.pdf

[iii] Harden, Jennifer W. et al. Networking our science to characterize the state, vulnerabilities, and management opportunities of soil organic matter, Glob Change Biol. 2017;1–14.

[iv] Jackson B. Jackson et al, The Ecology of Soil Carbon: Pools, Vulnerabilities, and Biotic and Abiotic Controls Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 2017. 48:419–45

[v] Sochorova et al,  Long-term agricultural management maximizing hay production can significantly reduce belowground C storage, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 220 (2016) 104–114

[vi] Jackson B. Jackson et al, The Ecology of Soil Carbon: Pools, Vulnerabilities, and Biotic and Abiotic ControlsAnnu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 2017. 48:419–45

The changing climate for cimate change....

"The global energy map is changing, with potentially far-reaching consequences for energy markets and trade. It is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States and could be further reshaped by a retreat from nuclear power in some countries, continued rapid growth in the use of wind and solar technologies and by the
global spread of unconventional gas production. "

This "rapid growth in renewables sound promising, BUT

"Coal has met nearly half of the rise in global energy demand over the last decade, growing faster even than total renewables."

"Natural gas is the only fossil fuel for which global demand grows in all scenarios, showing
that it fares well under different policy conditions"

"Growth in oil consumption in emerging economies, particularly for transport in China,
India and the Middle East, more than outweighs reduced demand in the OECD, pushing
oil use steadily higher."

"The transport sector already accounts for over half of global oil consumption, and this share increases as the number of passenger cars doubles to 1.7 billion and demand for road freight rises quickly. The latter is responsible for almost 40% of the increase in global oil demand"

Some of the conclusions in the latest World Energy Outlook

So oil increases slightly, coal increases a lot and natural gas increases.
It seems like climate change is forgotten...Or rather that actions against climate change are forgotten.

Climate labelling is a good cure for climate anxiety - but not for climate change.

 As a response to the huge attention to the devastating effects of climate change some five years ago, many organic standard setters rushed into making proposals for how to address this in standards. Those efforts range from simplistic and symbolic issues like a ban on air freight to complex scientific approaches based on life cycle assessment. We have discussed many times before (in this paper) how simplistic and symbolic actions such as an air-freight ban can have unfair and undesirable effects, e.g. on smallholders in developing countries, or how in general, the desire to regulate all and everybody sometimes is an example of how the best can be the enemy of the good.

Product labelling is a delicate tool. Thirty years of organic labelling and eco labelling have given us some experiences of what works and what doesn't work. Simple things like "chlorine free paper" and "grown without chemical fertilisers" work very well. More complex criteria are more difficult. Their credibility is mostly more depending on who is behind the label than the actual content of the label. For instance, most consumers of fair trade products probably have little knowledge of what those standards really mean, and even less of how they are certified.

Climate labelling tries to boil down very complex matters into one simple message. And also matters for which science are still struggling to give simple answers. Methane emissions from ruminants is one such issue where the scientific basis is very thin; there are not many measurements of methane emissions in field conditions. Similarly nitrous oxide emissions caused by farm methods and methane emissions from cultivation of rice are not researched sufficiently to allow for very clear answers to our questions. The choice will be between very simplistic, and therefore not very relevant and potentially counter-productive, standards and a scientific approach which is impossible to communicate in the market place, very expensive to implement and not predictable in how it will work, to the detriment of the producer, who might fail even if she or he did the right thing.

It has a bigger effect on the climate how your overall consumption pattern is than if you chose a climate labelled steak over a non-climate labelled steak. And even the perfect "climate neutral product" will have a bad climate effect if you drive half an hour by car in order to get it. There are also some conflicting demands emerging from the emphasis on climate effects. Supposedly slowly growing livestock emits more methane - per kg meat - than livestock the grows rapidly. But rapid growth is mainly accomplished by the use of concentrates, which is against the nature of ruminants and therefore not as natural or healthy.

To offer "climate labelling" as the response to people with climate anxiety may also make people believe that they are solving the problem with small changes in their consumption pattern, and divert them from taking other necessary actions, such as political demands to their governments. The same holds for "climate offsetting" by which a certain product is rendered "carbon neutral" by means of paying for carbon offsetting somewhere else. It results in the interesting effect that your bicycle trip is worse for the climate than taking a round the world trip by airplane. It is like your emissions never happened. But of course they have. There are not enough offset opportunities to counteract all greenhouse gas release. All in all climate change is too serious a threat to be mainly left for consumer choice to deal with. Organic standard-setters should not participate in making veils for covering up this inconvenient truth.

leader The Organic Standard issue 124 (forthcoming)

You can read more about climate anxiety at: http://www.theboywhodeniedwolf.com/

Engineering the globe: trusting the hand that flip the switch

Climate change has triggered ideas for large scale engineering of global systems. Large-scale ‘technological fixes’ fall into two categories. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques are designed to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Solar radiation management (SRM) techniques are intended to reflect a portion of the sun’s light back into space. CDR is based on biological, chemical or geological carbon sequestration. SRM is based on natural effects observed in the atmosphere following volcanic eruptions. A proposal for ‘sunshade’ geo-engineering consists of the installation of space-based sun shields, or reflective mirrors, to deflect a proportion of incoming solar radiation before it reaches the atmosphere. Sunlight deflectors would be placed in near-Earth orbits or near the Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers above the planet, where the gravitational pull of Earth and the sun are equal. An array of sunshades in this position would pose less threat to orbiting satellites than would near-Earth objects (UNEP 2010b, the Economist 2010b). If anything, these proposals underline the severity of the situation as well as how little we really know. They also give new perspectives on power. As Andre Matthews, an anthropologist at the University of California puts it, it is not just a matter of constructing a switch, it is a matter of constructing a hand you trust to flip it (the Economist 2010b). We should also realise how little we understand and realise that the risks of such global large scale engineering are huge and totally unpredictable. 

It is already a fact that we change many of the planet's systems enormously, but in the same way as most of these changes are a result of many small things (the car you drive, the meat you eat etc), also the solutions are to be found there rather than in macro engineering.   

UNEP 2010b, UNEP Year Book 2010

The Economist 2010b, We all want to change the world, 3 April 2010

Organic agriculture needs to address energy

There was always a simple agrarian equation that farmers must produce more energy as food than the energy they spent on growing it. They needed to produce energy for themselves, for their young (reproducing the labour force), their old and sick dependants, for other trades people and for the rulers, who offered protection in return for taxes or a labour tithe. For a long time this energy equation remained the same. Gradually, through technical innovations, productivity increased and new lands could be tilled, thereby allowing a slow increase in population. Overall productivity per worker didn't increase so much; slash and burn farming, almost without tools, is almost as productive as farming with oxen and a plough. Three things, all linked to each other, changed this dramatically: the emergence of the capitalist market economy, industrialization and fossil fuel energy.

The production per agriculture worker in the most advanced economies has now reached 2,000 tons of grain per person year, compared to historical times when it was just a few tons; an increase in labour productivity of about a thousand fold. In the poorest countries the average value produced by a farm worker is just above 100 dollars per year. In France it is some 40,000 dollars per year. And, the gap in productivity between the rich and the poor is widening. Labour productivity in modern farming can largely be explained in terms of the command of energy resources. The modern farmer is de facto in command of a massive army of "energy slaves"; a barrel of oil represents the energy of 25,000 hours of human toil – the equivalent of 14 people working a year under normal Western labour standards. This shows that the energy efficiency of modern farming is considerably lower than in pre-industrial farming systems. Our ancestors would have starved to death if they their energy ratios were as bad as ours; industrial countries use between 10 and 15 times more energy in the food system than is contained in the food they end up eating. Organic farming is somewhat more efficient than non-organic, but organic farmers in industrialized countries also have a very energy-inefficient production.

Farmers in developing countries, have almost no access to fossil fuel energy resources. Yet they are supposed to compete with their colleagues in developed countries who use energy resources that are the equivalent of hundreds of labourers. Perverse subsidy systems, trade and food policies further bend the rules in favour of farmers in rich countries. And to make matters even worse, various kinds of "climate" or "carbon" standards are now being imposed on poor farmers. But the reality is that (with the exception of slash and burn farmers) they are performing much better than industrialized farms, regardless how we measure (per hectare, per man hour or per kg crop or meat). The organic sector should avoid repeating this way of penalising those who are already disadvantaged, and we should realise that the energy use of modern farming is highly inefficient. The only more disturbing feature in modern farming is the destruction of natural capital in the form of soil erosion. Organic farming began with a concern about the soil issue. We now need to take the energy challenge much more seriously.

This article will soon appear as a column in the magazine Ecology and Farming

Which weather do you want to pay for?

It was always a human dream to control weather. Rain dances, sacrifices, prayers and other rituals have been used to call rain, stop rain, and protect crops from frost or floods. And we know today that we can influence the weather. Cutting down forests, especially in the tropics influence the climate so that was once a lush forest can become a try steppe; draining of field and wetlands lead to floods. And in the very big scale, global warming shows that we can even influence the global climate. Unfortunately, not in the direction we wanted perhaps, but still. And now the so called ‘international community' will have to agree which climate we should have. Should it be five degrees warmer or can we halt it on two degrees. Can the Canadians get five degrees warmer, while temperature is reduced in the tropics?

This kind of “production” is a growth market. Instead of seeing measures against global warming as costs, we can see it as production in the same way as parks, golf course and other things we make for our pleasure. One sees, already, how the corporate sector wants to ‘privatise’ this service; how the GDP can increase substantially. By economic incentives, we can not only solve a problem, but also turn the problem to a fantastic business opportunity, and new virgin market, more growth. The more far-sighted parts of the private sector has realised that there is huge opportunities in things like cap and trade; it takes away the right to collect pollution taxes from the government and place it in the hands of the companies. But one can also apply a completely contrary perspective, that we now start the process of final privatization of all resources on the planet. A privatization without parallel since the privatization of land; a process where markets take over all relations we have with nature.

Climate change has triggered ideas for large scale engineering of global systems. Large-scale ‘technological fixes’ fall into two categories. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques are designed to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Solar radiation management (SRM) techniques are intended to reflect a portion of the sun’s light back into space. CDR is based on biological, chemical or geological carbon sequestration. SRM is based on natural effects observed in the atmosphere following volcanic eruptions. A proposal for ‘sunshade’ geo-engineering consists of the installation of space-based sun shields, or reflective mirrors, to deflect a proportion of incoming solar radiation before it reaches the atmosphere. Sunlight deflectors would be placed in near-Earth orbits or near the Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometres above the planet, where the gravitational pull of Earth and the sun are equal. An array of sunshades in this position would pose less threat to orbiting satellites than would near-Earth objects (UNEP 2010b, the Economist 2010b). If anything, these proposals underline the severity of the situation as well as how little we really know. They also give new perspectives on power. As Andre Matthews, an anthropologist at the University of California puts it, it is not just a matter of constructing a switch, it is a matter of constructing a hand you trust to flip it (the Economist 2010b).

We should also realise how little we understand and realise that the risks of such global large scale engineering are huge and totally unpredictable. Still, it is already a fact that we change many of the planet's systems enormously, but in the same way as most of these changes are a result of many small things (the car you drive, the meat you eat etc), also the solutions are to be found there rather than in macro engineering.
(extract from Garden Earth)

more posts on climate:

Good farming needs a good society

A new discussion paper from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) calls for a rapid shift from conventional, industrial, monoculture-based and high-external-input dependent agriculture towards mosaics of sustainable production systems.

The paper, ‘Assuring Food Security in Developing Countries under the Challenges of Climate Change: Key Trade and Development Issues of a Fundamental Transformation of Agriculture’, points out that such sustainable (regenerative) production systems, such as organic agriculture could considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers, and the adaptation benefits of sustainable agriculture could help farmers face the challenges of climate change to food security.

This is not the first and not the last paper to point this out. The failure of "conventional" industrial, non-organic farming to deliver either sufficient food or income and its destruction of the environment are obvious reasons to look for something else. One of the big merits of this paper is that it doesn't stop at discussion methods. Transformation of farming is not about methods and technologies in the first place. The author, Ulrich Hoffmann writes:

The current structures in global agricultural input and output markets do not ease, but rather complicate the required fundamental transformation of agricultural production methods and consumption patterns. Huge price distortions, considerable externalities, market and policy failures, as well as powerful commercial interests create a “minefield” for constructive action being (unilaterally) undertaken at national level. Without a reform of international trade and investment policies that are really supportive of ecological agriculture national-level action may remain ineffective.

There is generally too much emphasis on and simplistic overestimation of the potential of technological development for agricultural transformation. This will only give false hope and excuses for doing nothing really fundamental. In fact, only few problems in agriculture are mainly caused by a lack of technology, many are related to social, economic and cultural issues that require structural changes, not techno-fixes. It is therefore critical to first of all define what problems are best solved by changing legal frameworks, trade policies, incentive structures or human behaviour and, second, what contribution technology could make within this very context.

Good farming needs a good society, and vice versa!

Climate; doing the things right or doing the right thing?

The climate issue has, for rather good reasons, taken alarmist proportions. We are given advise how to eat, travel, farm, perhaps even love climate-friendly. “Climate friendly” has in a short time become synonymous with environmentally friendly. It is good that GHG emissions finally, after being ignored for more than thirty years (I have books published in the sixties, e.g. by Murray Bookchin and Hans Palmstierna that pointed out the risks of climate change, with surprising accuracy), are getting attention. However, there are many other pressing environmental, and social issues, and there is a risk that they simply get lost and that decisions are made solely to address climate change with potentially serious adverse effects on other important things. Big biofuel schemes can threaten valuables biotopes; the perception that meat is not climate friendly can reduce grazing cattle in Europe with serious effects on landscape and biodiversity; meat consumption is geared towards (grain-fed) chicken instead of beef; that eating prefab foods from the supermarket is more energy efficient than cooking at home (which it is to many's surprise) may lead to further industrialization of our food; chemical pesticides and GMOs are promoted as alternatives to mechanical cultivation; the camp fires of scouts should be banned and we increase our distance to nature a bit more; nuclear power is promoted as a saviour. The list is long, and get longer by the day.

I believe that it would be much better to focus on energy, and the transformation of our society to a society that uses considerable less external energy. That is much more concrete and it tackles the problem of peak oil. It will have a direct measurable effect on climate change as well as on many other environmental problems, as energy use together with mindless consumption and profit are the three main drivers for destruction of nature - and society as well for that matter.

Economist: Coping with climate change - buy an airconditioner!

The Economist writes about climate change in its leader (27 November):
"The best protection against global warming is global prosperity. Wealthier, healthier people are better able to deal with higher food prices, or invest in new farming techniques, or move to another city or country, than the poor ones are. Richer economies rely less on agriculture which is vulnerable to climate change, and more on industries and services, which by and large are not. Richer people tend to work in air-conditioned buildings. Poor ones tend not to"

This is cynicism limiting to cruelty and reminds me of the alleged statement of Marie Antoinette when the starving people of France were demanding bread:"why don't they eat pastries instead" (I have reason to believe that she actually never said this, that it is fabricated statement, but we certainly have no problem imagine that she could have said it). Admittedly there are some other parts of the Economist leader that shows a bit more insight (but that wouldn't make such a nice case).

Exactly because rich people work in air-conditioned buildings they are causing global warming. To have more people working in air-conditioned buildings are really the last recipe we need for dealing with global warming. All since the Bruntland commission formulated the winning formula of "sustainable development" the myth that continued economic growth is not only good for all of us, but also the way to deal with environmental challenges has been spread by both industry and a growing sustainability industry in all shades. The worst shade is the greenwashing industry that churn out the same rubbish as they did before just adding a little sustainability component, such as recycled plastic, less emission or not even that; some nonsense "environmental certification". I am myself part of a more benign species of the sustainability industry. Nevertheless the idea that we can basically continue as we do, just tweak the technology a bit is a true pie in the sky. And it is the same pie even if re-named to green economy or some other fad expression.

Nitrogen in the biosphere - a cliffhanger

In a recent report by Johan Rockström and many other leading scientists, Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity the nitrogen cycle is identified as one of three areas (together with climate regulation and biological diversity) where we have surpassed a threshold for stable development. Nitrogen is the most common compound in the air, which is composed of some 78 percent nitrogen. Most of the nitrogen is, however totally inert biologically. It can be converted into active forms, such as nitrate and ammonia through thunderstorms, fire and biological processes such as symbiotic nitrogen fixation (by Rhizobium bacteria in the roots of leguminous plants) or fixation by blue green algae, nowadays called cyanobacteria. Nitrogen is a main building block in proteins and amino acids as well as in nucleic acids like RNA and DNA. The changes in the nitrogen cycles are manifold more market than the changes in the carbon cycle. The quantity biologically active nitrogen in the biosphere has increased nine times in hundred years, most of the increase has occurred the last fifty years (see figure). Increased use of synthetic fertilizers is the dominating reason. The increase is also projected to continue from 165 million tones year 2000 to 270 millions year 2050 (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Locally we can see great effects of the release of all this Nitrogen, while the global impact is less certain, what is certain is that there will be an impact.




As mentioned above, nitrogen plays a critical role in life processes, and the short term effect of improved availability of Nitrogen is often improved growth, e.g. that the forests grow better. Nitrogen hungry plants are favored over those that don’t need so much nitrogen, e.g. grasses a re favored over herbs and over leguminous plants. Surplus of Nitrogen and Phosphorus are according to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment one of the single most important factor for changes in ecosystems. The effluent of Nitrogen to the sea has increased with 80 percent between 1860 and 1990. However, in some areas the effluent has been more or less constant while the North Sea and coasts off China and the USA receive up to 15 times as much nitrogen now compared to hundred and fifty years ago. This run-off leads to eutrophication with tremendous effects on the composition of species, and in particular it stimulate the bloom of algae and the therewith associated dead zones, such as part of the Mexican gulf and the Baltic Sea. The use of synthetic fertilizers has lead to higher and higher levels of nitrates in drinking waters. Nitrogen also plays a role in the formation of tropospheric ozone, which leads to damage on crops and plants (MEA 2005). Synthetic fertilizers cause losses of other important nutrients such as calcium and phosphorus as well as acidification of soils and waterway (IAASTD 2009). Finally, the production of Nitrogen fertilizers is very energy consuming and in addition it incurs great emissions of laughing gas, one of the greenhouse gases. Mono-cropping of grain which is rather closely associated to the use of synthetic fertilizers leads to a reduction of carbon in soils and thereby increase the green house gases.

Agriculture represent two thirds of the emissions of nitrous oxide, the third greenhouse gas of importance. These emissions are directly related to the nitrogen cycle. The increase of livestock and even the use of chemical fertilizers are key divers. The use of nitrogen fertilizers is extremely inefficient and a lot more nitrogen is added to the soil than what is taken away with the harvest. The rest of this nitrogen “gets lost”, some of it as nitrate run off some of it as emissions of nitrous gases. In addition, nitrogen fertilizers also consume a lot of energy for their production. Studies of grain production in Great Britain and Sweden shows an almost linear correlation between use of nitrogen fertilizers and GHG emissions (KRAV 2008). Reduced use of nitrogen fertilizer should be a main strategy for reduction of GHG emissions from agriculture.

In summary, there are good, and frightening, reasons to follow closely the development of the nitrogen cycle. We should not be surprised if we find effects and costs associated with disturbed nitrogen cycles as dramatic as those of the carbon cycle. Considering how farmers and farm lands have become “addicted” to the use of synthetic fertilizers it could become a real thriller to reduce nitrogen effluents. (Extract from Garden Earth)