In the start of the book Sir William Crookes stood in front of a crowd telling everyone how the world would begin to starve. Everyone thought he was crazy, but in 1958 it started. China’s people were starving. This was because Mao Zedong their leader was getting rid of of farms and putting everyone in factory work. Thirty million people died in China. Some people even turned to eating grass/bark off trees and cannibalism.China then went back to farming to feed its people, but the population was growing so much that the farmers couldn’t produce enough food. China then decided to buy thirteen Haber-Bosch factories to produce ammonia so they could make fertilizer. This fertilizer made the diet of the Chinese from being rice and maybe some vegetables to everything you could think of. The Chinese are now having problems with obesity.
Haber-Bosch factories are still being used today. They have become more efficient than Carl Bosch’s wildest dreams could imagine. It took 1,600 workers to produce as much ammonia as thirty-five does today. It also take four times as much energy. Haber-Bosch Machines take up so much energy that it uses one percent of the world's energy. Without these machine billions of people would starve today. The Haber-Bosch machine made it so there was enough food in the world, but the people who do starve is because of local crop failures and transportation. These thing can be disrupted by droughts, floods, and war. You eat food that was made possible by Haber-Bosch machines everyday. About half the nitrogen in your body is from a Haber-Bosch machine so that makes you about half synthetic.
All this synthetic nitrogen isn’t always great though. This is especially when it is in the water and air. Fertilizer nitrates can run off from farms into water sources like lakes and rivers. Usually it's not harmful, but when it gets too extreme amount it can cause “blue baby” syndrome. This syndrome is when babies can’t carry as much oxygen in their blood so not enough oxygen can get to other body systems. This syndrome leads to death. These nitrates kill animals life when it gets to high levels and this can affect the food chain. The Baltic Sea is the most polluted by these nitrates and gets about 1.5 million tons of nitrates in it each year.
The Baltic Sea
The places that are even worse than the Baltic Sea are known as dead zones.
The Dead Zone of the world (They are in the red)
The one near Louisiana is the worst in the world. The air also gets affected by the Haber-Bosch machines because it release nitrates that are combined with pollutants into the air. Much is not known about how the Haber-Bosch machines hurt the environment and what else they can do for humankind, but scientists are looking to learn more about synthetic fertilizers for the future.
It’s sad to see how people in China suffered all because their leader wanted them to quit working on the farms to work in factories. It’s also interesting to see how one problem lead to another when China’s leader decided to make the Haber-Bosch factories to fix their starvation situation, but then created the problem of the fertilizer nitrates running off into water sources, which could cause health issues. I hope that scientists are able to figure out a situation where we can make synthetic fertilizers.
ReplyDelete