sunshine hours

Interesting study demonizing “combustion emissions” and farm emissions”

Emissions from farms outweigh all other human sources of fine-particulate air pollution in much of the United States, Europe, Russia and China, according to new research. The culprit: fumes from nitrogen-rich fertilizers and animal waste combine in the air with combustion emissions to form solid particles, which constitute a major source of disease and death, according to the new study.

The good news is if combustion emissions decline in coming decades, as most projections say, fine-particle pollution will go down even if fertilizer use doubles as expected, according to the new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Agricultural air pollution comes mainly in the form of ammonia, which enters the air as a gas from heavily fertilized fields and livestock waste. It then combines with pollutants from combustion—mainly nitrogen oxides and sulfates from vehicles, power plants and industrial processes—to create tiny solid particles, or aerosols, no more than 2.5 micrometers across, about 1/30 the width of a human hair.

Notice how combustion is evil.

Yet, according to the EPA:

Agricultural soil management is the largest source of N₂O emissions in the United States, accounting for about 79% of total U.S. N₂O emissions in 2014. Nitrous oxide is also emitted during the breakdown of nitrogen in livestock manure and urine, which contributed to 4% of N₂O emissions in 2014.

It isn’t combusion emissions creating N2O!!!!!!!!