The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Davidson: Nitrous oxide is the largest currently emitted ozone-depleting substance
“Now that we've been successful through the Montreal Protocol in reducing emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and now hydrofluorocarbons, N-to-O remains as the largest currently emitted ozone depleting substance.”
Davidson: Farmers overapply fertilizer as an insurance policy for bumper crop years
“That additional amount that I spend on fertilizers, yeah, it's significant, but it's, relatively speaking, it's not that bad of a deal as an insurance policy to make sure that I get the best possible yield I can.”
Davidson: Nitrous oxide drives about 7% of radiative forcing
“About seven percent of the radiative forcing is, on the hundred-year timescale, is attributed to N to O.”
Davidson: Atmospheric N2O is up 25% from pre-industrial levels to 335 ppb
“The atmospheric N-to-O prior to the Industrial Revolution was around 270 parts per billion. That's a B as in boy. And it's now up around 335. So it's gone up by about 25%, and it's going up more rapidly in the last decade than the decade before and the decade …”
Davidson: Nitrous oxide emissions persist in the atmosphere for 100+ years
“It has such a long lifetime that what we're emitting now is going to stay in the atmosphere for a hundred years or more and so, you know, it's going to have an impact on several future generations.”
Davidson: Post-WWII synthetic fertilizer adoption disrupted atmospheric N2O equilibrium
“Farmers began using synthetic fertilizers after World War II, and the rate of increase just sort of skyrocketed after that, and that was sort of the beginning of the end of An equilibrium of the N-to-O budget, because once we started using much more synthetic …”
Davidson: Crops absorb only about half of applied nitrogen fertilizer
“They take up, on average, roughly half of the fertilizer that we apply. Some crops take up more than half, some crops take up less than half, but a good rule of thumb, on average, is that only about half of the fertilizers we put on the land, and cropland, get…”
Davidson: US agricultural N2O emissions have remained flat over recent decades
“In the last few decades in the U.S., for example, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture have been sort of flat. They've maybe gone up a little bit in the last few years, but they haven't gone up much, and that's because we are making some improvements in ef…”
Davidson: Geographic separation of livestock and feed crops drives N2O emissions
“We have huge hog operations in North Carolina that's a long ways away from where we grow the corn and soybeans in Iowa and in Illinois. So we don't do a really good job of recycling the manure, so that's another place where more nitrous oxide is produced.”