Reading this, especially with the climate doom opening paragraph, I’m left with the idea that it will be used as a tool to limit modern farming practices by going after yield enhancing chemical fertilzers.
…it might even be feasible to use the knowledge in order to prevent nitrous oxide from being released into the atmosphere, for example, by additives in fertilizers that preserve the functioning of N2O-reductase…
From the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Nature: How the N2O Greenhouse Gas Is Decomposed
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a harmful climate gas. Its effect as a greenhouse gas is 300 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide destroys the ozone layer. In industrial agriculture, it is generated on excessively fertilized fields when microorganisms decompose nitrate fertilizers. Decomposition of nitrous oxide frequently is incomplete and strongly depends on environmental conditions. Researchers from Freiburg, Constance, and KIT have now identified the structure of the enzyme that decomposes nitrous oxide and the decomposition mechanism. Their results are published in the Nature journal (AOP; DOI:10.1038/nature10332).
The study demonstrated that the N2O-reductase enzyme possesses active centers made up of four copper atoms and two sulfur atoms. “Surprisingly, we found that microbiologists all over the world have assumed an incorrect structure so far,” explains Professor Oliver Einsle, group leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Freiburg. Scientists have assumed a single sulfur atom only and have not been able to completely identify the nitrous oxide decomposition mechanism. Based on the new data, the reaction sequence of the enzyme can be modeled much better. Future investigations are to provide further details and help understand which influence environmental conditions have on the process.
“It was of decisive importance that all steps of our investigation were executed in the absence of air oxygen,“ emphasizes Walter G. Zumft, retired professor of Karlsruher Institute of Technology. In contact with oxygen, parts of the enzyme react and the enzyme changes its structure. Together with Dr. Anja Pomowski from the University of Freiburg, the bacteria were cultivated under an oxygen-free atmosphere, the enzymes were isolated on a large scale, crystallized, and the structure was analyzed using X-rays. The team of four authors was completed by Professor Peter Kroneck from the University of Constance.
“The current study provides interesting and complementary insight into the nitrogen cycle,” says Dr. Ralf Kiese from the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research. Nitrous oxide and nitrogen production on fields, pastures, and in forests depends on a multitude of often opposing effects. Last year, a KIT study demonstrated that animal husbandry may lead to less nitrous oxide unter certain conditions (doi:10.1038/nature08931).
Detailed knowledge of microbial processes and their dependence on environmental conditions might help to better model the nitrous oxide contribution to the climate. In the long term, it might even be feasible to use the knowledge in order to prevent nitrous oxide from being released into the atmosphere, for example, by additives in fertilizers that preserve the functioning of N2O-reductase or by optimized processes in sewage treatment plants.
KIT press releases on other studies relating to nitrous oxide:
“Greenhouse Gases from Forest Soils”
http://www.kit.edu/visit/pi_2011_6446.php
”Cattle Reduce Nitrous Oxide Emissions“
http://www.kit.edu/visit/pi_2010_883.php
Homepage of the working group of Professor Einsle at the University of Freiburg: http://portal.uni-freiburg.de/xray.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Württemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT focuses on a knowledge triangle that links the tasks of research, teaching, and innovation.
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This is truly frightening, once again. The Climate Change meme has infiltrated every pore of ‘science’ turning it into an engine running on fumes: carbon dioxide, methane, and now the new kid on the block…a cousin of laughing gas.
“The pathway to go after farming and fertilizers”
Here we go – we ARE going to starve, freezing in the cold (and in the dark) after all …
/not sarc
.
Don’t know if it is frightening. Urea is the form of nitrogen fertiliser used. Half of it is estimated to volatilise before it is absorbed by the soil or plants. The problem with urea is that it also requires organic carbon to be most effective. As it utilises the organic carbon, more urea needs to be applied every year.
So if the pathway is found to be different then a mechanism to reduce the amount of urea might be found and costs reduced. If yields remain the same or even improve then this research could be very useful for increasing farm productivity without increasing costs.
Just ignore the carbon junkies and take the knowledge.
Take any research project in any scientific field, add dire predictions of climate catastrophe, boiling oceans, angry Martian landings, apocalypic paranoia driven by wild-eyed journalistas, and what do you get?
The Decline and Fall of Science.
I feel bad for the biochemists. Their work has been subverted by lunatics with an agenda. The biochemists should never have published. Instead, they should have written up their findings in secret and placed them in a time capsule — to be opened only when the world is no longer insane.
Nitrogen is the new CO2. Reactive nitrogen both cycles through the environment and reacts with the biosphere in ways not completely understood. The potential of nitrate pollution is being used to stop development using septic systems is much of northern New Jersey and Maryland is attempting to follow suit. There are fertilizer bills that are sweeping the country to limit lawn fertilizer- these are simply stalking horses to establish an impairment of intended use under the CWA. The Nitrogen TMDLs just imposed on the 5 states draining into Chesapeake Bay allow EPA to determine not only the required reduction of N loadings but also decide winner and losers with respect to what sectors of the economy are allowed the now limited nitrogen allocation. Soils scientists and ecologists from NJ to FL are being smeared in the press if they dare to speak up.
However of most concern should be Barnegat Bay NJ where excess nitrogen is accused of killing the Bay. The narrative for the Bay is now turning to accuse power plants for the excessive N load (despite EPA saying N is down 35 to 40% in the region over the last few decades). The surface waters flowing into the Bay have total nitrogen levels less than what USGS uses as the pristine natural background and also what EPA has established as the reference condition for this eco-region. The Bay may actually be at 60 to 100 year lows for nitrogen loading when we factor in the fact that all wastewater was removed from the Bay by 1980 and the once thriving poultry industry crashed a number of decades ago leaving very little agriculture. Much of the “science” is expert opinion however the agencies overseeing the work have said the critical reports are confidential. (The expert opinion used to develop the nitrate model to limit septic tanks is also confidential.)
Barnegat will be used to establish an extreme sensitivity to nitrogen and will be used to stop future development in the basin as well as justify renewed demands for controls of NOx in emissions.
Nitrogen may be a much more powerful control tool than CO2 and more importantly the original Clean Water Act gave EPA all the power it needs the to act.. EPA had been hesitant to broadly use TMDLs because they are in essence de-facto controls over every agriculture, development and energy decisions we make. That hesitancy has evaporated.
It’s easy to get rid of nitrous oxide. But it’s a new one expounded by people who think ruminants are harmful to the atmosphere because of methane, except their manure is helpful to soil microbiology that sustains plant fertility and production. Certain fertilizers are condemned now, organic only. Super phosphate is one that should not be used as it kills off soil microbiology.
Jack
The ammonia volatilization from fertilizer especially manure is now becoming a ground zero issue with EPA’s attempts to control non-point sources of nitrogen with TMDls
…it might even be feasible to use the knowledge in order to prevent nitrous oxide from being released into the atmosphere, for example, by additives in fertilizers that preserve the functioning of N2O-reductase…
Relax, there is no Soylent Green conspiracy here.
Pat @ur momisugly 22/8 10.55 pm. Yes Pat our local University has been given a research grant to cut down
nitrous oxide in the soil. If you put Gypsum in the soil it cuts down nitrous oxide production in waterlogged clay soils that become anaerobic.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/22/the-pathway-to-go-after-farming-and-fertilizers/#comment-725884
This comment might have been eaten. I did not see it come up the way it usually does.
MikeD,
What is sad are the attacks on scientists. A group of Florida scientists had found that an increase of algae in a spring was not the result of increased nitrogen but the loss of grazers – in this case a snail see http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2011/03/re-writing-the-septic-tank-fertilizer-nitrogen-gospel.html
Sadly, these researchers were “cautious” to openly speak about contrary findings as this reporter wrote:
“Because that “nitrogen story” is regarded as something like environmental gospel, and nitrogen pollution is a major concern worldwide, Cohen and several of his students speak cautiously of their finding that nitrates may not be the only, or even the most important, cause of the algae overtaking Florida’s springs”
Earlier FL stories attacked soil researchers as tobacco scientists for their concerns with respect to the new fertilizer laws. In NJ an academic soil scientist wrote the fertilizer bills sponsor warning the bill may do more harm than good. No changes were made to the Bill whose scientific basis was crafted by a 2nd year law student working as an intern for one of the NGOs pushing the Bill.
“It was of decisive importance that all steps of our investigation were executed in the absence of air oxygen,“
They are after the oxygen too? This bad, bad oxygen pollution of the air…
/s (I hope)
A study from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (2011, August 22) reports that nitrogen fertilizer may be positive for the environment:
“Nitrogen in the Soil Cleans the Air: Nitrogen-Containing Soil Is a Source of Hydroxyl Radicals That Remove Pollutants from the Atmosphere.”
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110819131519.htm
Mike D. says: August 22, 2011 at 10:39 pm
“Take any research project in any scientific field, add dire predictions of climate catastrophe, boiling oceans, angry Martian landings, apocalypic paranoia driven by wild-eyed journalistas, and what do you get?
The Decline and Fall of Science. “
Too true!! Science without a moral or ethical dimension, where almost none have any philopsophical training in their own “religion” now believes that it has the right even duty to moralise to the rest of us about our ethical failings based on nothing more than a belief that as scientists they are somehow superior despite the fact that almost nothing they say or do is backed by the evidential base which is the fundamental philosophical basis of science.
Bogus hogus pocus! Second rate politicians.That’s what science is now!
The study demonstrated that the N2O-reductase enzyme possesses active centers made up of four copper atoms and two sulfur atoms.
That’s interesting. Modern well fertilised soils are often depleted in sulphur and it is not routinely added. It may limit the growth and activity of organisms that produce/use this enzyme.
Organic fertilisers have sulphur but anaerobic soils are depleted of oxygen. They kill good microbiology and some microbiology can switch from good aerobic soils to anaerobic. Considering the air we breath is 78% nitrogen there are some scientists who on another gravy
train to make money out of hot air. Septic tanks are a different thing, they need to break down
correctly and one can’t use bleaches or certain disinfectants as it kills the bacteria needed to break them down. Although the ancient Eqyptians actually used human excrement to fertilise the soils too. Mind you they weren’t that healthy when drinking or using the Nile water it spread that snail that killed them. Now they have a vaccination against infection.
‘Nitrous Oxide is a harmful climate gas’ says it about all as far as these people are concerned.
No It Is Not.
It as a NATURAL gas in the atmosphere the concentration which remains very low and therefore completely harmless. It is an Inferred reacting gas that looses its heat though convection, conduction to the monotonic gasses and a bit of radiation.
Anthony, I think you have missed the point entirely.
Far from being a “tool to limit modern farming practices by going after yield enhancing chemical fertilzers” (sic), this is presented as opportunity to mitigate the impact of fertilisers at the point of use: “it might even be feasible to use the knowledge in order to prevent nitrous oxide from being released into the atmosphere, for example, by additives in fertilizers that preserve the functioning of N2O-reductase”. Thus scuppering a major anti-farming and fertiliser argument.
The products of N2O reduction are N2 and water. As far as I know these are not perceived as bad for the environment. In the absence of N2O-reductase activity the denitrification of NO3- to N2 is incomplete, and N2O is the volatile product.
Whether denitrification is incomplete of not, the process represents loss of reactive nitrogen which has been supplied to support crop growth, usually in the form of manufactured urea or ammonium nitrate. These are manufactured in energy intensive processes and to lose the reactive nitrogen into the atmosphere is economically wasteful. This was the position before the Carbonistas took over, and will be when their sham is finally accepted as such.
This study fits completely within the agenda of those behind the CAGW mythos.
If they did all that under an oxygen-free atmosphere, how can their results be used to better model the nitrous oxide contribution to the climate when the atmosphere isn’t oxygen-free? In industrial agriculture, how often are fields fertilized in air oxygen-devoid conditions?
Fabulous; no light, no heat, and no food if the EPA has its way. Unbelievable.
Obvously the Germans are gung ho to establish the Fourth Reich.
This time it’s not only jews and gypsies that are at risk but the entire world population.
Famine will be their ultimate weapon.
In the mean time EPA is pulling the same string setting limits on agricultural dust emissions.
http://junkscience.com/2011/08/19/epas-lisa-jackson-misinforms-politico/
The UNs Agenda 21, how to rid the planet of humans.
The Australian Federal Senate have just got one legislation through the back door. I haven’t the exact details but it is considered a world first. They will allow farmers to trade carbon credits overseas when we haven’t passed the carbon tax yet.
Now there was legislation on the cards about taxing livestock (ruminants) for methane emissions to stop people eating meat (by the Greens of course and PETA)
$11 per head per year for cattle and $7 per year for sheep. Even Ross Gaunaut suggested farmers should make more money out of carbon sequestration credits than wool. Even suggested they farm kangaroos (a marsupial) instead of cattle. In this new world first they
mention curbing methane emission from livestock. Now how the hell are they going to do that!
Grow trees instead of meat. And wool. They are crazy, and this is getting legislation through the back door wait to see when it hits the headlines amongst carbon tax skeptics and protesters. I’m sick to the stomach with this government, so am going to bed now.
“It was of decisive importance that all steps of our investigation were executed in the absence of air oxygen,“ emphasizes Walter G. Zumft, retired professor of Karlsruher Institute of Technology. In contact with oxygen, parts of the enzyme react and the enzyme changes its structure.
==================
this makes the whole study null and void, soil gives off oxygen. sure poop pits on Cafos have anearobic isses thats where they should be utilising the methane as they did onfarm decades ago in usa. anaerobic soils wont be growing anything of worth.
bloody ridiculous.