- No Recommendations yet - go add some!
- Great show but I take issue with your placing of Haber's process for the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia so quickly in the category of good. Synthetic nitrogen certainly revolutionized agriculture and has allowed for billions of humans to live along with all our pigs, cows, chickens, dogs and cats. And of course kittens are adorable and synthetic nitrogen isn't inherently evil. But we can't so quickly ignore the consequences of its abuse in soil degradation and pollution even if we pass over the myriad of other problems caused by a all those billions of people of lived off food it helped produce.
Soil and clean water are required for the sustenance of humanity. The current practices of industrial agriculture which abuse and are entirely dependent on synthetic nitrogen feed the world now, but also guarantee their starvation later; when the loss of top soil and desertification of land erases the gains in production allowed by synthetic nitrogen.
And where was the shout out for the diazotrophs? They can make atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia too! And I am sure they have at least a dark history devouring other bacteria or releasing some sort microbial death gas.
