/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15591534
>It's kind of hard to deny the fact that neolibs support synthetic fertilizers and pesticides
It's kind of like they aren't retarded enough to believe that regenerative farming techniques are some miracle solution and largely can't produce food, in bulk quantities, to replace NPK fertilizer, pesticides, and modern industrial farming to reliably feed billions of people.

>>15252905
Ammonia is only the precursor to N fertilizer. Many fertilizers are NPK so they include nitrogen phosphorus and potassium but content of each is modulated based on crop, natural soil content, region, etc. Back to Nitrogen fertilizer, they start with natural gas (CH4) to NH3 via Haber-Bosch, you could technically do this with electrolysis of water as the hydrogen source too without natural gas at a massive energy cost. From there, using the Ostwald process, Ammonia is oxidized in a couple stages to form NO to NO2 then reacted with water and oxygen at elevated temperature and pressures to form HNO3 (nitric acid). Finally nitric acid is reacted with ammonia gas to form ammonium nitrate salt solution and water is evaporated off. Also worth mentioning, this one product, alone, feeds about half the world population.

Oil usage shriveling to nothing is likely a ways off still, the current powerplants being built these days are either a renewable source (mostly wind and solar in the environments optimal for them) or are natural gas burning as methane is a biproduct of the shale industry whereby they really just care about the petroleum and want rid of natural gas. Now if you accept that oil is a limited resource, and recognize the huge number of things it is a commercially irreplaceable precursor to (petrochemical, fertilizer, etc.) and you have bought into climate change, the conclusion of that inquiry is that oil consumption ought be curtailed to save it for more important usage. Also acknowledgement of the fact that 50% of the world population is fed solely by unsustainable and liberal use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer suggests in such a world there are too many people currently (and it will be an even more prescient problem in 30 years) for current food/grain consumption rates and most are in the wrong locations in places like Africa but there is some wiggle room like cutting ethanol and meat production to feed more people which will in turn make gasoline and steak/chicken more expensive. That world is honestly not as good of one as we currently exist in and it will be a hard transition, the period will be marked with mass immigration of starving people flooding countries with ample food production. There will probably be riots and revolutionary movements too in certain western countries forced to deindustrialize as most people have an expectation about what is owed to them on the basis of historical quality of life that is no longer possible to achieve without inexpensive access to petroleum and its derivatives. No doubt many countries will shift back to burning the ample reserves of lignite and sub-bituminous coal. We're addicted to cheap energy and we will adapt, I don't predict it to be a painless process however.