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Reduced air pollution leads to higher crop yields
- anyfactor 4y agoTLDR Air polluion = Nitrogen Oxides For summer crop 50% reduction of NOx , crop yield increase - China 15%, EU 10%, India 8%
- gpm 4y agoThose are summer numbers, they also given winter numbers of China: 25%, Western Europe: 10%, India: 6%. The article is kind enough to link to the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9909 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9909 The data is coming from satellites, which are apparently able to directly measure NO2 levels (a good proxy for NOx levels), and they use near infrared reflectivity to estimate crop yield (which they say previous studies have shown to be a good way to estimate it).
- Gigachad 4y agoThe main source of NOx in the air would be ICE vehicles right?
- gpm 4y agoCars are a significant source, though in China "industry" is a bigger source per [0]. I'm not sure what the ration worldwide (and I didn't find a global number in the quick search that found the links I am posting). Crop residue burning also comes to mind as a source that would be particularly concentrated near... crops [1]. [0] https://www.acarindex.com/pdfler/acarindex-4786c244-1875.pdf https://www.acarindex.com/pdfler/acarindex-4786c244-1875.pdf [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348764564_Estimation_of_Field-Level_NOx_Emissions_from_Crop_Residue_Burning_Using_Remote_Sensing_Data_A_Case_Study_in_Hubei_China https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348764564_Estimatio...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 4y agoActually, the paper goes on to explain that they discovered that a lot of the damage is caused by other pollutants that either just happen to exist on the same regions as NO2 or are created by its reaction with the air (they suspect ozone is a large guilty). They measured NO2 because it's the best one to measure.
- twoquestions 4y agoThank you for posting the actual quantitative data. All the sound and fury in the world pales in comparison to the awesome and terrifying power of Microsoft Excel!
- fritzo 4y ago'pollution' is vague and politically charged. The article observes that Nitrogen Oxides reduce crop yields, whereas some "pollution" (e.g. volcanic ash) can increase crop yields.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> 'pollution' is [...] politically charged. If I ever needed to know how tribal our society has become, here it is. Pollution now has a varying definition depending on if you are left or right. Jesus.
- jthrowsitaway 4y agoPollution has a different interpretation depending on your body composition. Some microbes thrive on Nitrogen Oxide.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoNobody said anything about left or right, just that it was political.
- labster 4y ago
- Taywee 4y ago"political" means more than left and right.
- lettergram 4y agoTbf everything has always been politics. How we handle issues are a social discussion.. That said, this is a definition problem… which used to be agreed upon lol. The issue is one political party is trying to use the term “pollution” to enact policy changes; so it becomes political and definitions change, etc in a fight for power.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
- blobbers 4y agoI asked a 5 year old if lower pollution means things grow better. She said yes.
- VeninVidiaVicii 4y agogood = good. Now ask a non-leading question.
- whatshisface 4y agoThese studies sound trivial in the headlines because the headlines take out the quantitative degree of the effect, which was the hard-won part of the study. An excerpt: >Utilizing this data, the researchers calculated that a reduction in NOx emissions of around 50% in each region would improve yields by approximately 25% for winter crops and 15% for summer crops in China. In Western Europe, yields were estimated to improve nearly 10% for both winter and summer crops. Now it is possible to put a number on how much NOx is costing farmers.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoThis is the type of quantitative research that's hard to report because, in my mind, it's not particularly useful reporting. Simplifying it for layman understanding makes it seem completely trivial, as you point out. The methodological details that make the study interesting are only relevant to people who are gonna read the study anyway.
- bamboozled 4y agoI actually up voted you because you were down voted. It is common sense for many reasons. Not detracting from the value of the study, but I do agree, these days a five year old would've guessed pollution = bad.
- Majestic121 4y agoWell yeah, because of the studies and wide communication of the results, to push for a less polluted world. Ask a kid in 1950 on whether the factory right here, or daddy's car, is bad for the fields, and you would not have the same answer. Now that I say it I'm not even sure if kids would answer correctly on this one today.
- Smoosh 4y agoI'm frequently reminded of this cartoon: https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/betterworldfornothing.jpg https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bette...
- hourago 4y agoIt is an underappreciated part of the discussion. Fighting climate change also reduces the emission of contaminants to the air that we breath. Even if climate change were not happening, we would have to reduce pollution anyway. I visited China a few years ago, the touristic potential is limitless, it has so many great cities to visit, natural parks, rivers, and many more. But, the air is so polluted that it is difficult to enjoy any of it. There are a million reasons to reduce pollution, and only a very bad one to not do it.
- brnt 4y agoThis is why it's important to not let "green" be reduced to renewables. Fortunately it's now over, but for a while wood pellet heaters were subsidized because wood is renewable. Yes, and it's also the number one pollutant in your neighborhood if anyone heats like that. Decarbonization must be a requirement as well.
- janlaureys 4y agoThe most important reason that I'm somewhat of a treehugger is because trees are just nice. Walking in a forest is nice, taking my dog for a walk outside in nature is nice, hearing the birds chirp is nice too.
- eadmund 4y agoI really dislike that cartoon, because it fails to grapple with opportunity costs and tradeoffs. 'What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?' doesn't address the fact that a world which is better than it would otherwise be measured on those axes must necessarily be worse than it would otherwise be measured on other axes. Every dollar spent on on one thing is necessarily a dollar not spent on another thing. TANSTAAFL. And of course individual people have different weights they apply to different goods. E.g. one person might prefer energy independence to green jobs, and another vice versa. While there may be a globally optimal solution per each person's preferences, I do not believe that there can be a globally optimal solution for everyone's preferences. And also, things can interact in weird and unpredictable ways. Higher crop yields should yield lower food prices, but perhaps requiring cleaner engines increases the cost of food transportation such that food prices increase instead (n.b.: I am not arguing that is in fact the case). Knowing all this is an information problem, and figuring it all out is a planning problem, and it turns out that solving those two problems is not just practically impossible (cf. every centrally-planned administration ever): it's theoretically impossible (cf. chaos theory in mathematics). So, 'har, har: we can just make everything better for free' is a really naïve view to take.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoPeople see a smokestack and think the burnt carbon goes up. But the smokestack is a pure marketing maneuver to not leave sharp red dots on cancer charts. Smokestacks are marketing, period. Intended to diffuse harm. And they do all kinds of shit so the smoke looks billowy and doesn't plop down on the land right away, in keeping with it's marketing-oriented nature. On TV smokestacks always have very billowy vertical plumes, same shots of the same smokestacks. In real life, especially at night in Puchuncaví in the 90s, smoke plops, and then it's clear the coal plant is plain shitting on the land, which is why they do it at night because seeing it kills the marketing effect. Can't let people see smoke plop, like pouring down at a downward diagonal from the smokestack, then it's not a plume, more like a bomb if it's coming at you in a straight line at a high angle of attack. You gotta lob so it's invisible and spread out it if you don't want it coming right back at you, which it will if you shoot it. Color matters too, white smoke looks so harmless, that's why TV smokestacks emit white smoke, whereas nuclear power plant steam is black, it's accurate in reverse. People don't like getting shit on in a straight line. You gotta tell people it's dust and not soot, lob don't shoot. It used to be in eg Pittsburgh or Manchester the whole city was covered in soot and people were obsessed with sweeping, twice a day was the norm, to pretend they had servants, or were lucky (eg the wind favored them or just blessed), the two principal forms of prestige. Plus you had to sweep because soot is so gross, everything turning the color of a drunkard's shit, it's incredibly ugly, I saw it in Santiago's downtown growing up, the most polluted city of its time. Allegedly Mexico City was worse on a global scale but in the Southern Hemisphere Santiago was by far the worst. Worst in South America. You know I divine worst in the world for real. Fuck the statistics, the polluters fuck with the numbers, so fuck their numbers. In fact the government to this day by law--a shit-eating Pinochet law I may add--has to call polluters ahead of inspections. There's no inspections. They just invent numbers to look good. Smokestack as marketing again. Plus it served as chemical oppression for political purposes. But in all three cities, Industrial Manchester, Industrial Pittsburgh, and Dystopian Santiago, a curious accusation from Mother Nature itself. While under pollution, the color of moths went from white--like dust--to black--like soot.
- mellavora 4y agoDuring the first Covid lockdowns, when car traffic was down massively, our fruit trees bore so much fruit that branches broke under the weight.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoBut without everyone having to carry their butts from home to the offices and then to the supermarkets and then back home, everyday by car, just think of the damage that has done to our economy. How are the poor car manufacturers, dealers, gas stations, shopping centers, office real-estate enterprises supposed to survive whiteout all this car traffic? /s obviously
- papito 4y agoDid anyone notice that the pollen season last year, after almost a year of lockdowns, was absolutely ridiculous? I do not remember anything like that. Everything was blooming and smelling well into the summer. My floor had green dust for months on it - I live near a large park in an NYC borough.
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoIs ‘irony’ the right word to describe current situation where we convert fossil fuels to calories in the name of Agriculture? Without fossil fuels, food production would go down drastically. If we have to run faster to stay in the same place and burn down the world in the process because we are past carrying capacity, then I think the solution hasn’t found the right problem.
- sephamorr 4y agoThe true irony is when we take the fossil-fueled crops and turn them back to energy with efficiency that barely breaks even, depending on your assumptions.
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoIt’s actually worse than that when we factor in supply chains..transporting fresh produce in refrigerated trucks and keeping them in air conditioned grocery shelves after throwing out 40% of all fresh produce we grow. All the issues in America can be solved if we had efficient network of public transport for inter and intra city movement of people and goods. Housing, car dependency, health, green spaces, pollution..the list can maybe accommodate a few more
- hackerfromthefu 4y agoOr better efficient distributed local production!
- Guthur 4y agoMore FUD to push the agenda. Remember when we're freezing and starving in the dark that this blinkered view of civilisation is what brought us to the inevitable end that the green agenda brings forth. We do not have the alternatives for what you want to get rid of, period. Industrialisation has brought us to where we are, removing it for this nonsense will doom billions.
- areoform 4y agoAs an internet stranger, I would like to overstep my bounds and recommend some reflection on what drove you to this reaction. If you read the article, it's an extremely thoughtful point that makes sense if you know a bit of biology & chemistry, > In Western Europe, yields were estimated to improve nearly 10% for both winter and summer crops. Crop yields in India were calculated to increase by roughly eight percent for summer crops and six percent for winter crops. North and South America were generally shown to have the lowest levels of NOx exposures. > > Overall, the study highlighted that effects appeared most negative in the seasons and locations where NOx likely drives ozone formation. You can read what Ozone does to plants here, https://www.nps.gov/subjects/air/nature-ozone.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/air/nature-ozone.htm Just like it irritates/burns our tissues, it does so with plants as well. You can also trivially arrive at the relationship between NOx and Ozone here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Formation_and_reactions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Formation_and_reactions Your reaction is deeply out of proportion here.
- chimprich 4y ago> More FUD to push the agenda. You are providing the FUD: > Industrialisation has brought us to where we are, removing it for this nonsense will doom billions. Who is advocating removing industrialisation? The article points a way towards higher crop yields. Do you have any actual criticisms of the article itself or just vague emotional generalities?
- imtringued 4y ago