Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumPhys.org: Study finds human-caused nitrous oxide emissions grew 40% from 1980-2020, greatly accelerating climate change
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-human-nitrous-oxide-emissions-grew.htmlby Boston College
Like carbon dioxide and methane, the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide plays a significant role in global warming. While naturally occurring, it is also produced primarily by farming activity. Human-driven nitrous oxide emissions flowed unabated between 1980 and 2020, with more than 10-million metric tons released into the atmosphere in 2020, according to a new report led by Boston College researchers for the Global Carbon Project.
Credit: Global Carbon Project
Emissions of nitrous oxidea greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide or methanecontinued unabated between 1980 and 2020, a year when more than 10-million metric tons were released into the atmosphere primarily through farming practices, according to a new report by the Global Carbon Project.
Agricultural production accounted for 74% of human-driven nitrous oxide emissions in the 2010sattributed primarily to the use of chemical fertilizers and animal waste on croplandsaccording to the report "Global Nitrous Oxide Budget 2024," led by researchers from Boston College and published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
In an era when greenhouse gas emissions must decline to reduce global warming, in 2020 and 2021 nitrous oxide flowed into the atmosphere at a faster rate than at any other time in history, the international team of researchers reported. On Earth, excess nitrogen contributes to soil, water, and air pollution. In the atmosphere, it depletes the ozone layer, and exacerbates climate change.
Agricultural emissions reached 8 million metric tons in 2020, a 67% increase from the 4.8 million metric tons released in 1980, according to the study, the most comprehensive study of global nitrous oxide emissions and sinks produced by a team of 58 researchers from 55 organizations in 15 countries.
2naSalit
(92,842 posts)War.
I don't see the contribution war makes in all this. There have been wars throughout the past century and nobody is factoring in the immense daily contribution war makes to global atmospheric condition.
OldBaldy1701E
(6,393 posts)BComplex
(9,094 posts)mopinko
(71,840 posts)every cafo shd have a digester, and farmers shd b making hugelpiles around their fields to stop runoff.
Cheezoholic
(2,619 posts)Until we wean ourselves off of $1 plastic toothbrushes, $2/gal milk, bitching and moaning about $4 a dozen eggs, expecting local out of season produce 24/7/365, $10 combo's, hair on fire when gas hits $4/gal, insistence on homes twice as big than we need in giant subdivisions that clear cut trees for room to pack the giant houses so close together you can toss your neighbor toilet paper from your own bathroom, cars 5 times bigger than we need even electric, pretty green grass and perfectly manicured landscaping for our mini castles, $3 duct tape, overnight or same day delivery of every ticky tacky piece of shit you can think of, just all of this useless ridiculous capitalist ticky tacky shit everywhere, you get the picture. And I'm just talking about 300 million in the US.
We want, want, want but we don't need this ticky tacky shit, we're addicted to it. And the corporate pushers from big oil to shampoo manufactures to toy makers are happy to be the pushers on the corner, yet we completely blame them while never looking in the mirror. It's the addiction to this cheap ticky tacky shit that poisons the water and air around the world.
Our kids and grand kids are fucked plain and simple and it's the heaviest weight I will take to my grave that I did it to them. My greed, my want for the everything the 20th century had to offer, my selfishness and lack of personal fore thought for more than half my life has put upon them an unfair burden they may not recover from.
I'll be gone when the shit really hits the fan and I'm so very very sorry, nothing can hold back my shame. And, so unfairly, the best chance our kids future has is to do the complete opposite of what we did. I don't blame those who understand a damn bit for being pissed as fuck for what we've left them and for those who don't get it, who will bitch if they can't that $1 plastic tooth brush, we must do more.
I apologize for my generation, the Ticky Tacky generation
BComplex
(9,094 posts)And since 1980 we've been inhaling this stuff? Then how did the republicans get so mean?