'Nitrogen cascade' called threat to ecosystems

[phantom power]

"We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Galloway, author of a paper and co-author of a second on the topic in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

While nitrogen alone is inert, harmless and makes up 78 percent of Earth's atmosphere, reactive nitrogen compounds — such as ammonia — have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels.

Galloway and his peers refer to it as a "nitrogen cascade."

(...)

In the statement issued with the study, an example was given of a nitrogen atom that starts out as part of a smog-forming compound and is then deposited in lakes and forests as nitric acid, which can kill fish and insects.

Once carried out to the coast, the same nitrogen atom may contribute to red tides and dead zones, the researchers said. After that, the nitrogen returns to the atmosphere as part of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which destroys atmospheric ozone.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24653839/

[izquierdista]

1. I give it an 'F'

Somebody forgot to read his chapter on redox chemistry and can't tell his amines from azides from nitrides from nitrates and nitrites. I doubt he got to be a "professor of environmental science" with this level of chemistry ignorance, so it must be that his writing that sucks.

[phantom power]

2. I'm confused. He didn't use any of those five terms in the article.

[izquierdista]

3. Because he doesn't understand

The glaring error in the article is this magical nitrogen which goes from oxide (nitrate) to ammonia (amine) back to oxide wreaking all sorts of environmental havoc along the way. If the writer wants to explain why nitrate fertilizers are causing a problem, fine, go and do that. If wants to explain how oxides of nitrogen cause problems, fine, let him explain that. But to confabulate the two into this tale of reckless nitrogen out of control is pure crap.

Nitrogen chemistry is something to be studied and understood, but this writer only uses it to inflame some uninformed point of view. If he pulled this in one of my chemistry classes, I would not only give him a failing grade, I would suggest some career path other than science or engineering.

[phantom power]

4. so you are saying he isn't providing a mechanism for changing oxidation states?

[izquierdista]

5. I don't see one

It reads like a screed that "there's too much heterogeneously bonded nitrogen!" In one paragraph he talks about nitrogen fertilizer runoff and then in the next he's changed over to oxides of nitrogen caused by combustion.

I won't lay it all on the good professor though. It could be that he knows what he is talking about and it is the MSNBC staff writer who is chemically illiterate.

[phantom power]

7. Science reporting often sucks. Hard. I wonder if...

the oxidation changes are the "real" subject of the research. There is certainly no discussion of them in the article, but it is easy to imagine that being ignored.

[hunter]

6. It's stupid science reporting. Again.

Science reporting in the mainstream press is notoriously unreliable.

If the science is not mangled beyond recognition by the reporter, it's mangled by the editors.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Here is some source material

Whenever I read some unrecognizably mangled science in the news that catches my interest, I look for original source material that the reporter may have had at hand. I know that all good journalists strive to make sure that the facts of the matter are accurately misrepresented and written in as scientifically illiterate a manner as possible.

http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=4637">Tyler Environmental Prize Goes to University of Virginia's James Galloway, Author of Key Papers on Nitrogen Cascade's Ecological Effects

http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20080512.095316&time=11%2000%20PDT&year=2008&public=1">Addressing the `Nitrogen Cascade` - Papers in Science Discuss Incessant Cycling of Reactive Nitrogen in Environment

http://www.initrogen.org/">The International Nitrogen Initiative

I hope this helps. Alas, my career in journalism is now dead.

--p!

[izquierdista]

9. The first two still have the same error

If you read about this miscreant nitrogen atom, the one that poisons the fish, fertilizes the red tide, and then end up destroying the ozone as NO is beyond the bounds of credulity. The reaction cycle they seem to imply is:

N2 ---> NO2 (poisons fish) ------> NH3 (fertilizes red tide) -----> NO (destroys ozone)

This is below stupid, this is at the level of a 4-year old with a crayon. I hope this science writer's editor puts him in a room with washable walls and gives him a box of brightly colored erasable markers. But these scribblings are best left on the refrigerator door and not in a publication meant for adult readers.