Sustainability of phosphorus, an essential plant nutrient

We need phosphorus for food, and it's being wasted, so we might run out, but it is also a pollutant according to globalist researchers. I noticed in the recent LAS publication, The Quadrangle, that a professor of sociology and law at the University of Illinois, Anna-Maria Marshal, is a co-principal investigator with the National Science Foundation in STEPS which received a $25 million grant for research in phosphorous sustainability. That's a lot of money but STEPS involves 9 universities. Her part--study how people can be encouraged to adopt innovative technologies. So when I looked up her bio, which wasn't included in the article--guess what? She's also an associate professor of gender and women's studies, and associate professor of global studies. Her research interests are environmental justice movement and the LGBTQ movement. For background on this phosphorus sustainability movement I looked up one of the references.

The Story of Phosphorus Sustainability implications of global phosphorus scarcity for food security, by Dana Cordell, PhD thesis, published January 2010, abstract, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265282063

"In a world which will be home to nine billion people by the middle of this century, producing enough food and other vital resources is likely to be a substantial challenge for humanity. Phosphorus, together with nitrogen and potassium, is an essential plant nutrient. It is applied to agricultural soils in fertilizers to maintain high crop yields. Phosphorus has no substitute in food production. Therefore, securing the long-term availability and accessibility of phosphorus is crucial to global food security. However the major source of phosphorus today, phosphate rock, is a non-renewable resource and high quality reserves are becoming increasingly scarce. This thesis estimates peak phosphorus to occur before 2035, after which demand will exceed supply. Phosphorus scarcity is defined by more than just physical scarcity of phosphate rock and this thesis develops five important dimensions. For example, there is a scarcity of management of phosphorus throughout the entire food production and consumption system: the global phosphorus flows analysis found that only 20% of phosphorus in phosphate rock mined for food production actually reaches the food consumed by the global population due to substantial inefficiencies and losses from mine to field to fork. There is also an economic scarcity, where for example, while all the world’s farmers need access to sufficient fertilizers, only those with sufficient purchasing power can access fertilizer markets. Institutional scarcity, such as the lack of governance structures at the international level that explicitly aim to ensure long-term availability of and access to global phosphorus resources for food production that has led to ineffective and fragmented governance of phosphorus, including a lack of: overall coordination, monitoring and feedback, clear roles and responsibilities, long-term planning and equitable distribution. Finally, geopolitical scarcity arising from 90% of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock reserves being controlled by just five countries (a majority of which are subject to geopolitical tensions) can limit the availability of phosphorus on the market and raises serious ethical questions."

What if you've been told for two decades that phosphorus is dangerous What Is The Purpose Of Phosphates In Laundry Detergent : Phosphate Fertilizer (finefertilizer.com) and now you're told you need it because it's essential so farmers should conserve and limit use, Phosphorus progress in Ohio – Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal (ocj.com).

Nutrient Pollution: How Excess Nitrogen and Phosphorus are Shaping Health Outcomes | National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (ncelenviro.org)

The Issue | US EPA

"Phosphorus plays many roles in society today – both desired and undesired. At any moment in time, phosphorus fulfils numerous different functions – on vastly different temporal and geographical scales: transporting split-second signals to the brain in the chemical ATP*, or immobile as a Ca3(PO4)2 molecule in apatite-rich phosphate rock that took tens of millions of years to form, awaiting extraction, or gradually being drawn up from soil solution by plant roots via chemical diffusion, or discharging from our bodies in a momentary drop of urine before being diluted by a flood of flush water to join other household and industry wastewater at a distant treatment plant, polluting water bodies as cyanobacteria, or simply cycling naturally between land, biota and water without being noticed by most of society. Because of its multiple roles and manifestations, phosphorus is perceived quite differently by different sectors. Table 5-1 identifies 12 different forms of phosphorus, each with different perceived societal functions and each relating to different societal sectors.62" p. 80 of title cited above, followed by excellent graphics, tables, etc.

On p. 102 of this 2010 paper the problem of Morocco and Western Sahara which is phosphate rich was noted. In President Trump's backed Abraham Accord The United States recognized Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara. "By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production." Morocco drives a war in Western Sahara for its phosphates : Peoples Dispatch

*Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a complex organic chemical that is found in every cell of the human body.

Redeemed!

Serious, committed Christians have noticed that as our society falls away from organized religion, interest in some form of environmentalism increases. Sort of, if you believe in nothing, you'll fall for anything (pantheistic global warmism, for instance). For those who were youngsters in the 1970s, it's a way to relive their youth. Others are recent converts. At the WSJ Friday, Stephen Moore commented on similarities and how serious recyclers have become.

Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes with rich irony that "we now live in a society where Sunday church attendance is down, but people wouldn't dream of missing their weekly trek to the altar of the recycling center." These facilities, by the way, are increasingly called "redemption centers." Which is fine except that now the greens want to make redemption mandatory. Oh, for a return to the days when someone stood up for the separation of church and state.

I don't go to redemption centers, but I do attend church (early, traditional--we have 10 services at UALC) There is a recycling bin somewhere here at Lakeside, although we usually take our cans and bottles home to Columbus--currently have a few (plastic) bags full rattling around in the van. Chalk up one more use for the ubiquitous plastic bag. So far this week I've: cut one up and braided it to make a little rope to attach the basket to my bike; scooped and disposed of lots and lots of kitty poo from our cat Lotsa; used two to wash things I didn't want to touch; covered my bicycle seat; used one over the clothes line to protect an item of clothing from dirt. Does anyone remember the days we were constantly reminded to use plastic bags in order to save trees? In addition, the bicycle is 40 years old, the basket I was attaching is at least 10 years old as is the seat, and the tires were purchased in 1979. I challenge the greenies to match my small biking footprint. Also, my van has been parked most of the summer because at Lakeside you can walk everywhere you want to go.



The worst form of recycling is putting the huge ugly bin in plain sight where it visually pollutes. Our church does that--and I've written about it. Even Meijer's supermarket finds a way to discreetly place them so they don't change the appearance of their store. I guess they think visuals are part of marketing. What a concept!

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Visual pollution

Most people recognize this kind of pollution

as seen from the north side of our Mill Run UALC campus
but they'll walk right by this disaster sitting in our front yard on the south side of the church.
Let's not put in place environmental solutions that cause more problems at the local, national or global level.

From Petrarch: "It occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augustine's Confessions. . . where I first fixed my eyes it was written: “And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.” "

From the Brazil [Portuguese] journal Cad Saude Publica Nov-Dec 2002: "Interviewees defined garbage as anything useless and considered it a problem whenever it accumulated in the surroundings producing a bad smell or visual pollution, attracted animals, caused disease in children or adults, or was shifted from the individual to the collective/institutional sphere of action to solve the problem."

Update: One commenter asked if I had picked up the trash I photographed (in the park that adjoins our church property), and the answer is YES! I took a plastic bag with me, and one of those long grab hooks and cleaned up quite a bit that I could reach--I also do that along Kenny Road because people throw things out of cars, and along Turkey Run. I hope someone else will remove the UALC VBS signs at the street intersections on public land. They are a safety hazard.

The ethics of corn ethanol

We were told by the TV reporter last night that Easter eggs will cost $.34 more a dozen this year. Corn ethanol is the reason, but reporters probably don't want to look on the down side of Al Gore's movie theories. Such as, China has now caught up to us in emissions (a decade ago we were told it would be 2025), so we could burn water in our automobiles and it wouldn't make a bit of difference in the global temperature, assuming that emissions are causing warming, which many scientists say is a bunch of cow poop. Being Americans, we not only think we are God, but that only what we do to the atmosphere matters, and the only hurricanes that hit land, are the ones we see here.

But let's look at the ethics of ethanol.

" . . . about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes. Increasing subsidized ethanol production will take more feed from livestock production, and is estimated to currently cost consumers an additional $1 billion per year. Ethanol production increases environmental degradation. Corn production causes more total soil erosion than any other crop. Also, corn production uses more insecticides, herbicides, and nitrogen fertilizers than any other crop. All these factors degrade the agricultural and natural environment and contribute to water pollution and air pollution. Increasing the cost of food and diverting human food resources to the costly inefficient production of ethanol fuel raise major ethical questions. These occur at a time when more than half of the world’s population is malnourished. The ethical priority for corn and other food crops should be for food and feed. Subsidized ethanol produced from U.S. corn is not a renewable energy source." Abstract, "Ethanol Fuels: Energy Balance, Economics, and Environmental Impacts Are Negative," Natural Resources Research, Volume 12, issue 2 (June 2003), p. 127-134.

And he doesn't even mention the bioterrorism of a well placed fungus that could wipe out the Americans' dependence on corn for fuel the way the potato blight sent the Irish running for a new country in the 19th century.

and the CO2 emissions of corn ethanol

"Proper mass and energy balances of corn fields and ethanol refineries that account for the photosynthetic energy, part of the environment restoration work, and the coproduct energy have been formulated. These balances show that energetically production of ethanol from corn is 2–4 times less favorable than production of gasoline from petroleum. From thermodynamics it also follows that ecological damage wrought by industrial biofuel production must be severe. With the DDGS coproduct energy credit, 3.9 gallons of ethanol displace on average the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. Without the DDGS energy credit, this average number is 6.2 gallons of ethanol. Equivalent CO2 emissions from corn ethanol are some 50% higher than those from gasoline, and become 100% higher if methane emissions from cows fed with DDGS are accounted for. From the mass balance of soil it follows that ethanol coproducts should be returned to the fields." "A First-Law Thermodynamic Analysis of the Corn-Ethanol Cycle," Natural Resources Research, Volume 15, issue 4 (December 2006), p. 255 - 270

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