explain it a looks at something that's no laughing matter for the environment. nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, is helping fuel global climate change as after a short break. ameren timberland, thanks for joining us. the people in trucks engine trying to feed the city center the straight people's screens the around the world more than 150000000 people us we of mine because no one should have to

make up your own mind. dw may 4 mines of the in 1985, we were screwed and made csc guesses have severely damaged chosen le, gas is from fridges, air conditioners, and has spray said toward the massive fall into the shield which protects us against uv radiation. 2 years later, countries around the world came together and then more than $100.00 substances responsible for the whole, and that saves the wage and major damage. today, the ozone layer has on track to make a full recovery, largely due to the montreal protocol. just they ignored one things, nitrous oxide, better known as loss. and guess this stuff is no joke. uh it is in the past that can become now the just remaining swear to the ozone

layer and could undo one of the biggest environmental successes that humanity is ever experience. and as if that wasn't enough, it's also super potent greenhouse gas that makes global warming and a lot worse. so why has no one talking about nitrous oxide? and how can we stop this stuff from building up in our atmosphere? you probably know nitrous oxide from these little kenneth's this. but what is it into o is a colorless gas that's made up of nitrogen and oxygen. english. kim is joel. just briefly, 1st synthesize that in 1772. and that's a chemist test. experimented with a gas and discovered that bracing it in makes you feel light headed. he called it laughing gas in the 19th century. nitrous oxide became a real hit at so called laughing gas parties, which were basically a bunch of rich people getting high on it. at one of these parties, american dentist power as well as got the idea to inhale the gas as a pain killer. before having

a tooth extracted. he introduced the method into medicine where it still is use today. and apparently it hasn't lost any of it's a traction as a potty direct either or has to do. the thing is levels of nitrous oxide was stable for centuries, but the amount we pumped into the atmosphere has increased by a staggering 30 percent in the past. 40 years alone, there are many reasons for that and we get to them. first, we need to understand why this much nitrous oxide and our address here is a problem. well, nitrous oxide, not only destroys the ozone layer, it also works as a greenhouse gas and trips. the heat from the sun in the atmosphere is the 3rd most abundant greenhouse gas of the carbon dioxide and re sign. it's just no one really knows about it. somebody needs to be an advocate for the 3rd most important greenhouse gas. and so here i am. this is eric davidson. he's an environmental scientist who has been working on nitrous oxide for more than 30 years. we need to

look under every stone to try to find ways to mitigate climate change. ignoring it is a bad idea. it's around $265.00 times better a tripping heat than c o 2. and once it's in the atmosphere, it stays there for about $114.00. yes, accounting for about 6 percent of global warming, which doesn't sound like a lot. but when we have such a small window to stay below 1.5 degrees, every single emissions, this is david canter. he researches how nitrogen pollution and food security are connected. so where does all these nitrous oxide in the atmosphere even come from around half of it comes from nature like forest ocean's or so is this is inevitable . what not inevitable is global warming. the 100 gets more access the microbes than i was. so it's are nitrogen into nitrous oxide. it's really scary. this

is caroline or micro biologist who researches how micro pts, and the environment influence one another. tomorrow night we're so excited we release the woman, the climate guest on tomorrow night results excites me release of the result. that's awesome. that's a really difficult situation to rebecca on top of that comes to the nitrous oxide that as humans reduce as a byproduct of bio bus, burning, burning fossil fuels or waste water for example. or because we still use it at the dentist. but these are, by far not the biggest players, is the biggest source accounting for about 2 thirds of all human costs. nitrous oxide emissions, agriculture humanity has, is a complicated relationship with nitrogen. it is both an essential resource, right? our food system does nothing without it. and at the same time, it is one of the biggest threats, the environment and human health. when the, when it's up to the inbox, the good old days pharmacy has been, your composts are times that find nitrogen to make their soil richer and nitrogen.

but everything changed in the early 20th century. that's when german chemist, catawba anti bush invented and method that turned agriculture upside down. they later won the nobel prize for this. thanks to the so called how the process, it was suddenly possible to produce massive amounts of ammonia fertilizer and put massive amounts of nitrogen onto our trucks. in the last 60 is the amount of nitrogen fertilizer we use has increased 10 fold. this has made it possible to feed a growing population just we're over doing it a bit. every year we spent more than a $100000000.00 tons of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on our crops. but only about half of it makes its way into the plants. the rest is taken up by different microbes inventory which turned it into nitrous oxide. among other things, the i p. c. c estimates that for every 100 units of nitrogen applied at least one to low as last as into o n. depending on where you are,

it can be much more. we found it to be as high as 3 or 4 percent in the systems where we work in um, in the sort of north central ios that stephen home and environmental, scientists research and greenhouse gas emissions from soil. and so there can be tremendous geographic variations. but as nitrous oxide goes out, the source also takes in and binds carbon dioxide to the number one climate killer . couldn't that balance it out in any of these corners? so it'd be an acre cultural systems. the ongoing emissions of nitrous oxide from the soil to the atmosphere can have a much greater negative impact on climate. then the most optimistic benefits that we might get by storing additional carbon. the other big players, the chemical industry accounting for around 14 percent of nitrous oxide emissions. here it comes as a byproduct when we make a depict and nitric acid. we need these for producing nylon cars,

fertilize this or explosives. in 2018, the biggest launch into us admitted into o equivalent to the carbon dioxide pollution from 2000000 cars. in the coming decades, emissions are expected to increase even more if they are more and more people on the planet, we need more food, make more waste and products. that's why we need to think about solutions as most human make. nitrous oxide emissions come from agriculture. this is where we can expect the greatest success. so it's inevitable that there will always be some nitrous oxide emissions. question is, can we kind of redesign our agricultural system to making much, much more efficient? and so that we can sort of the couple this food production always partially the couple, the food production from the nitrous oxide production, the biggest fix would be to waste less fertilizer. we should use just as much as

needed when the crops needed spots. we won't know what the right amount of nitrogen to apply is until the season is over. and so this is a real challenge for foreigners, right? who have to, you know, maximize their long term income to say to stay in business. many pharma supply the nitrogen and fall off to the harvest. besides, it's easier to plough then into farm must have less to do, but has no concept growing the nitrogen just it's there until the early spring. and a lot of it is close to the environment. optimized for lies less can also help, like adding nitrous occasion inhibitors that can slow down how quickly my troops transform ammonium or a special coaching on the fluids lives that can delay the release of nitrogen in the cycle and make it available when the plants actually need it optimized for allies replications to not be beneficial intensive deals, but it's also going to be beneficial in terms of nitrous oxide emissions changing

the way we farm can also help like planting nitrogen, fixing krupps, rotating crops or applying to food lies as close to the roots as possible, sound straightforward. so why aren't all farmers doing this? tom is a very constrained and the decisions that they can make it constrained by regulatory forces. market forces, cultural forces, behavioral forces, knowledge courses, social forces, full of those actors shape what a family does on this deal. as a farmer actually has a quite narrow decision making space. so it's complicated. what's much less complicated, reducing nitrous oxide emissions from industry. all we need to do is put these little things into smoke stacks where nitrous oxide causes through they act as a catalyst and help break up nitrous oxide into di, nitrogen and oxygen foster. and they're extremely effective getting rid of almost all the nitrous oxide but not all companies do it. and there's in very

few countries. is there really a legal requirement for them to do it? that's not a technological problem. it's not really even an economic problem. it's basically a political problem. it's policies are in place, they can be very effective search and use a goal countries into you implemented the nitrous directive. its goal was to protect water from nitric pollution. as a result, emissions from agricultural, sorry, was decreased by 21 percent. just policies like these are few and far between. we did a now analysis a couple of years ago of all of the nitrogen policies around the world and the county exist. one thing that shocked us in particular that in agriculture, 2 thirds to 3 quarters of old policies incentivized or facilitates the commerce of not. if you think back to the montreal protocol, why didn't they include nitrous oxide and why don't they do it now? they are reluctant to take on nitrous oxide because it comes from agriculture and

because there are also some natural sources and then complicates the issue. so again, it's complicated. we're still trying to come up with solutions that what we have in the current system of production, which makes sense, but going to need to continue produce a lot of food support. well, we're not going to change that systems overnight for sure. but part of the scientific community is, responsibility should be in shining a light, showing us the waste boyd and what future was crude looked like in different scenarios. we will never be able to totally cut into o emissions, but reducing them is possible and their agency need it. so what do you think we should do in order to investigate nitrous oxide emissions? if you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. and if they curious about more time, it's so big, subscribe to this channel. we post videos like this every friday on the

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