I would not normally post on the same topic two days running, so forgive me. But right on cue after my post yesterday about Richard Black exaggerating the impact of nitrogen dioxide, his colleague Mike Amos has obligingly followed up with a supine piece about the dangerous effects of ‘n species’ (greenie for nitrogen compounds). It seems to me that these pesky n****s could be the BBC greenies’ latest line of assault. Mr Amos’s homily is based on an alarmist paper that claims to have found a build-up of nasty nitrates in the aquifers feeding the Thames. He tells us in the usual shock horror tones:
…it also illustrates just how intractable the issue of nitrate pollution has become. Over the 140 years of the new time series, this nitrogen component of river chemistry is seen to climb relentlessly. The pollution will almost certainly have altered the ecology of the river, shifting the balance of plantlife in the Thames.
Funny, I thought the quality of the Thames water was getting better. Even the alarmist Environment Agency says so. But never let the facts get in the way of a good scare…Mr Amos clearly wants us all to start fretting about those reckless farmers who douse our fields in nitrates to boost crop yields, and those selfish motorists who use their cars, thereby unleashing the ‘n’ species into the Thames water cycle.
Are nitrates as dangerous as is implied here? Greenies obfuscate and cry wolf so much that it’s impossible to tell. This paper from the University of Colorado gives matter-of-fact advice for dealing with them (no alarmism in sight) ….and here, Anthony Watts and WUWT readers provide a wealth of knowledge and perspectives that show that the issues involved are far from as clear-cut as the language of the Mike Amos story claims. The most telling contribution to me focuses on that greenies are measuring this ‘danger’ BECAUSE THEY CAN. It’s yet another quotient of horror, along with rising CO2 levels.
What it shows yet again is that the alarmists at the BBC are determined to scare us with every hook that becomes available. Here, the Thames has been transformed at a stroke from an environmental success story to a major tale of impending doom. It’s all part of the systematic, relentless political campaign to make the environment the fulcrum of the anti-capitalist revolution that they so fervently desire.
i think that the eco-beeboid moonbats have learned (just like lab rats would) that every time they go on about that load of bollox called global warming/climate change, more and more ppl become skeptics, so they have to have a new bogey man instead of Co2 and nitrates appear to fit that bill
keep up the good work beeboids, we’re counting on you
🙂
Plant food, its what farmers put on their fields to feed the crops that feed us. Some run off does harm most does no harm other than feed the plants that live in the rivers that animals feed off in the river food chain. These beeboids and their ecofascist allies seem to have issues with plant food for some strange reason.
Still its a scare story, and thats all that counts. Dont mind the quality feel the width. But hey no need to mention the EU in all this is there? No question that the BBC will not want to examine the EUs role in farming rules and regulations and the ban on stubble burning that directly led to chemical companies boosting nitrogen production that farmers were then forced to buy. No need to mention that the agro chemical companies had lobbyists in Brussels and they had with them a great deal of money to direct to those corrupt officials and a nice power point presentation showing fantastic crop yields if the fields were drenched in nitrates. And that other inconvenient dirty little secret of excess procuction due to the EU CAP strategies.
So we get a weird half assed bits and pieces infantile report with no background and no real investigation and certainly no conclusions that might harm their funding sugar daddies in Brussels, just another BBC fraud to add to the list of BBC frauds. BBC scum, there really is no other way of describing them is there?
Never any shortage of some obscure alarmist material to get het up about, is there?
It’s no use, mankind HAS to have something to be frightened of, otherwise it’s not worth living, is it?
We can rely on the good old BBC to come up with something to worry us shitless, whether it’s true ot not is irrelevant, and another matter entirely.
We are very naughty indeed for living, and wanting to continue to live, in our comfortable lives supported by the things we have discovered, invented and produced – so much so that it is necessary for certain orthodoxies, supported by the Dear National Broadcaster (and I use the word ‘dear’ in a multiple kind of way), to scare us into going back to the Dark Ages, when life was so much better, and we all lived as one with nature, and all in the garden was rosey – all right, we didn’t live very long, but it was much nicer, allegedly…
I just wish these people would lead by example.
At least they didn’t have the BBC in the “dark” ages, Natsman, telling us that Charles Martel was just an islamophobe and that we had a “skills shortage” of child groomers anyway.
Nitrogen is a problem for the plant world. It forms the bulk of the planet’s atmosphere, but it is hard to access. It has to be ‘fixed’ to be made accessible to the plant.
Nitrates if they flow into enclosed waters (slowly draining lakes or tidal marshes) can cause eutrophication problems ie the ‘soup’ is so rich that an explosion in algae depleting the oxygen.
But this does not apply to the Thames.
The nitrates wash out into the North Sea, feeding algae, which feed micro-organism and so on up the food chain to……fish.
Fish breed up in response to the increased availability of food, thereby increasing the potential catch.
The ‘nitrogen’ is not a poison. Like CO2 it is an indispensible component in the environment that makes carbon based life possible.
Sure there are changes along the river in its rapid progress to the tidal estuary and beyond. But these changes are not necessarily bad per se.
There is always the unintended consequences – give up buring stubble – more disease carried over from year to year – more sprays.
Stop farmers using fertilizer, poorer crops, they will need yet more money for the care of the countryside and larger imports of cereals from countries where there are no controls – the ecofascists surely care about those countries ecosystems and their effect on climate change (if there was any)?
I’ve looked at the Natural Reasearch Council website to go back to the ‘source’.
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1125
One important point was made by the study on the delayed throughput of nitrates through the aquifer and run-off, entirely absent from the Amos gloom and doom.
Quite important, really.
“And even though the amount of nitrate from agriculture has fallen since the 70s, levels remain high. Crucially, they found that it can take around 30 years for nitrate concentrations to drop off.”
So there is a form of mitigation in the pipeline (so to speak), in the changing patterns of land use which Amos fails to cite.
Yesterday night on BBC1 Local News in London, yet another set of inchoate environmental nutters were given extensive publicity (including the usual unchallenged rant to camera by some teen who should be working for a living) complaining that “polluter” BP was coughing up money to support the Tate, Royal Opera House etc. The parasites were shown tipping a barrel of (what appeared to be) crude oil onto the pavement in Trafalgar Square.
BTW I missed – presumably because it was ignored – mention in this bulletin about the efforts of the bus drivers union to pursue the successful blackmail tactics of ASLEF and RMT re payment to do their job during the Olympics. Anyway, why should a genuinely local issue concerning London’s transport system be dealt with when a, presumably, national issue (support by big corporate for the arts) can be squeezed in on a pretence so that the BBC anti-capitalist narrative can be pursued? The pretence is that because the major arts venues happen to be in London, the parasites’ complaints are somehow “local”.
Robin. Courage. You cannot talk about this subject enough. Post every day!
“Environmentalism” is now more than a required belief by the media; it has become a credential of employment. Can one imagine a BBC job interview in which the candidate expresses skepticism that global warming is caused by manmade CO2 emissions? Out the door. Thank you very much. Goodnight.
Marxists have completed their metamorphosis into Greens. They know if one controls CO2 emissions, one controls everything. The obedient foot soldiers of the movement, like Black, are cogs in a mighty wheel it will take years to discredit. It is a religion with a grip on the Liberal mind akin to the one the pre-reformation Catholic Church had on peasants in the Middle Ages. So, please, more facts and more video outtakes of the kind you linked to yesterday in which U.S. environmental scientists are caught red-handed faking data and planning outright lies in their upcoming criminal lawsuit brought against them by Chevron. As one of them (ex-Harvard pal of President Obama, Stephen Donziger) says: “…after all for the court this is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bullshit. It really is. We have enough, to get money, to win”.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/1N6SyeRUiw0
isn’t it funny how lefties eschew Christianity,but once thay have done so,they replace it with the cult of warmism and worship the earth itself
does it have something in common with islam perhaps?
Anthing, any kindred religion that advocates our self-precipitation into hell and damnation, and that would appear to include living.