
Meat and dairy production emit more nitrogen than Earth can cope with - clumsysmurf
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248000-meat-and-dairy-production-emit-more-nitrogen-than-earth-can-cope-with
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gus_massa
> _One shortcoming of the research is how it treats dinitrogen (N2), which was
> excluded from the analysis of nitrogen emissions, Sutton says._

What is the problem with N2??? Most of the atmosphere is N2 and most of the
Nitrogen in fertilizers is extracted from the N2, so it's a closed cycle.
(Other form of nitrogen can cause problems, like algae booms, and other nasty
stuff, but can't imagine how N2 can be a problem.)

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csense
Last time I checked, about 70% of the Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen.
"Nitrogen pollution" sure sounds like fake news to me.

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gus_massa
It is very difficult to transform N2 to a molecule that is biological useful,
only some bacteria can do it (some live in special nodules in the roots of
some plants)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation)
and there are some artificial process to do it (mostly to make fertilizer and
explosives)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process)
. An excess of fertilizers (directly from plants or from the mature) can
produce problems
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom)

(Anyway, that sentence about N2 is very weird.)

