How we can stop global warming now

MANILA: Salem, Massachusetts says, "You control climate change. Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk. Change" (nps.gov). Nice, but not good enough. I heard "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle" in the mid-197s yet, or 40 plus years ago, but nothing's changed except the climate!

But yes, you control climate change. Today, Friday, 22 April 2016, is Earth Day, and the theme is "Trees for the Earth." Not trees, I say, if you want to make a huge difference in the life of this warming world. There is something you can do right now that is literally earth-shaking, but allow me first to explain. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, which has been demonized by climate change experts. So it has nothing to do with trees or forests, which are carbon sinks. No carbon footprint.

Here is a clue. Arcadia Biosciences says, "Agriculture is the second largest industrial contributor to global greenhouse gases (GHGs). It’s ahead of the entire transportation sector and behind only electrical and heat generation" (arcadiabio.com).

And having studied the matter since 2014, I say, "It's the fertilizers that are the major culprits." In 2004, the Philippines imported 8.8M tons of fertilizers, with more of the nitrogenous fertilizers: urea 30% and ammonium sulfate 24% (Florence Mojica-Sevilla, 2006, Pinoy Agribusiness, pinoyagribusiness.com). Take note especially of the N fertilizers. It's your fertilizer footprint, not carbon.

I saw in Flickr a photograph of bags of urea (Millennium Promise, flickr.com); "Ingredients for Growth," the bag says, but there's only 1 ingredient: 40% nitrogen, 0% phosphorus & 0% potassium. The N fertilizer promises too much to the farmers of Kenya, just as it does to farmers in the Philippines.

On 27 September 2014, or almost 19 months ago, I wrote: "Nitrous oxide has a warming power on the atmosphere that is 300+ times higher than carbon dioxide. Stop the nitrous oxide suicide!" (See my essay, "Global Alliance For Climate-Smart Agriculture. Next, Client-Smart Agriculture!" BIAG, blogspot.com).

Since I think I'm the only earthling saying that nitrous oxide (N2O) is the most heat-full (to coin a word) and therefore the most hateful of all the GHGs, just to be sure, I might as well study more the available data & information on N2O and find out whether or not I'm off the mark, or off my rockers.

According to FAO data, from 1961 to 2005, world consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers increased 30 times (Zhongxian Lu & KL Heong, 2009, ag.udel.edu). In the Philippines, in the same period, fertilizer applications increased 10 times (Reyes Tirado, David Bedoya & Vladimir Novotny, February 2008, "Agrochemical use in the Philippines and its consequences to the environment," greenpeace.to). You can be sure that that's mostly N fertilizers, and that more and more Filipino rice farmers have learned to over-apply those fertilizers. If the farmers are crazy, why haven't we put them in institutions?

As an extension consultant of the Department of Agrarian Reform to many farmers in Pangasinan and La Union in the last 2 years, and as Vice Chair of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative in my hometown of Asingan, a farming municipality in Central Luzon in the Philippines, I have firsthand knowledge that our rice farmers apply even double the recommended amounts, on the belief that they will get higher yields if they do. "Better safe than sorry," they will tell you. They do not realize that the Law of Diminishing Returns apply in this case. When they reach near the maximum yield potential of the crop, the more fertilizer they apply, it gets to the point where they get less additional yield. You cannot go against the law of Mother Nature.

From Encyclopedia Britannica (britannica.com):

Diminishing returns, also called law of diminishing returns or principle of diminishing marginal productivity, (is the) economic law stating that if one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increases in output.

They don't know the economics of that because our farmers are not good businessmen; they are not businessmen, period.

There is abuse or excessive use of fertilizers in the Philippines (Rene Pastor, 29 April 2013, "Should the Philippines be self-sufficient in rice?" Philippine Commodities Digest, wordpress.com). The author says, "Switching crops or getting Filipino farmers to reduce their use of fertilizer would require a determined government thinking of long-term consequences for the country." Sadly, he says, the government has no such long-term plan.

Let me be clear: I am neither campaigning for organic fertilizers, nor manure, nor compost, nor vermicompost, nor leaf mold, nor humus, whatever the brand name, for rice or for any crop. I'm not selling my expertise; all I'm doing is pointing out what has been overlooked by climate change scientists:

Nitrogenous fertilizers are unrecognized as the major contributors to climate change, and it's not the gas methane that is the major greenhouse gas – it's the nitrous oxide.

Of GHGs, Arcadia Biosciences (as cited) says, "A major contributor of GHGs produced from modern agriculture is nitrous oxide (N2O). Agriculture accounts for 84% of global N2O emissions." I say, but since carbon dioxide (CO2) has been demonized by climate change experts, those figures for N2O are not that meaningful, right?

Wrong. The global warming potential (GWP) of N2O is the carbon dioxide equivalent of 310 (carbonneutralcalculator.com). That means a molecule of N2O heats up the atmosphere 310 times more than a molecule of CO2. That is to say, if you have 310 million tons of CO2 up there, its heating potential is equivalent to only that of 1 million tons of N2O.

The significance of that is like this, using available figures: Of Australia's total GHG emissions, 75% is CO2 (09 December 2014, "Meet N2O, the greenhouse gas 300 times worse than CO2," theconversation.com). We know that the ranking of the amount of gas contributions to global warming is this: #1 carbon dioxide, #2 methane, #3 nitrous oxide. If we assign 25% to methane and only 10% to nitrous oxide, the heating potential of that N2O is 310 times, or 10% times 310 equals 31 and, therefore, the contribution of Australia's N2O to global warming is 31 while that of its CO2 is only 0.75. 

Those are only indicative figures. Everywhere, carbon dioxide as GHG is over-rated 310 times!

It has been determined scientifically that fertilizer use is responsible for the increase of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere (Robert Sanders, 02 April 2012, UC Berkeley / Berkeley News, news.berkeley.edu). Worldwide, to reduce global warming, Sanders says:

Limiting nitrous oxide emissions could be part of a first step toward reducing all greenhouse gases and lessening global warming, (UC researcher Kristie) Boering said, especially since immediately reducing global carbon dioxide emissions is proving difficult from a political standpoint. In particular, reducing nitrous oxide emissions can initially offset more than its fair share of greenhouse gas emissions overall, since N2O traps heat at a different wavelength than CO2 and clogs a “window” that allows Earth to cool off independent of CO2 levels.

A practical advice. The big countries don't really want to reduce their CO2 emissions, to protect their industries – leave them alone! We concentrate efforts on the emissions of N2O that does double harm to the atmosphere: traps heat and at the same prevents Earth from cooling off.

So now I'm blaming the climate change experts for knowing since about 10 years ago that nitrous oxide is 310 times deadlier than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and yet they ignored the mathematics of it. Between N2O and CO2, N2O is so much the deadlier of the species.

So, if we want an immediate and significant reduction of global warming by a whooping factor of 310, we must limit the use of N fertilizers in agriculture – and we avoid confronting the carbon dioxide-emitting big guys who want to protect their big investors. They can go to hell, while we the poor nations of the world can start immediately and in a very short time by teaching the farmers microdosing in order to do right with N fertilizers. In microdosing, you apply a 3-finger pinch to each hill of your crop – a precision-farming technique developed in Africa by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which is based in India. My computation is that farmers will save 90% of their fertilizer cost that way. In the Philippines, we will be importing less than 1M tons of fertilizers, not almost 9M. With microdosing, instead of a decrease, there is in fact an increase in yield. This fertilizer technique was developed by ICRISAT under the 15-year headship of now-retired Director General William Dollente Dar, a Filipino.

Having followed ICRISAT's scientific work since early 2007, I know ICRISAT can teach the world much more on how to do right with climate change. Remember: We start with the fertilizer footprint, not carbon.