Head Counter Essay

One of the most influential discoveries in recorded history was the Haber-Bosch Process, a process that allows scientists to take nitrogen from the air and turn it into usable nitrogen in the soil for plants. Since the wide-scale implementation of the Haber-Bosch process, more than half of the worlds population has come to rely on crops grown with the Haber-Bosch process. This has allowed the human population to explode as we circumvent the nitrogen cycle. The process has "altered the global nitrogen cycle so fundamentally that the nearest suggested geological comparison refers to events about 2.5 billion years ago." The Haber-Bosch process is extremely important because it was the first processes developed that allowed people to mass-produce plant fertilizers due to the production of ammonia. It was also one of the first industrial processes developed to use high pressure to create a chemical reaction. This made it possible for farmers to grow more food, which in turn made it possible for agriculture to support a larger population. Many consider the Haber-Bosch process to be responsible for the Earth's current population explosion as "approximately half of the protein in today's humans originated with nitrogen fixed through the Haber-Bosch process." In my opinion, The Haber process has had a positive impact on the environment, because it  provides the nitrogen fertilizer that helps feed the world.

On the curse side we have several issues including:

• Serious imbalances to the nitrogen cycle.
• High fossil fuel energy inputs.
• Negative effects on soil organisms and soil organic matter.
• Excess runoff cause ocean dead zones.
• Major component of weapons including all those roadside bombs.

Nitrogen, a key component of all proteins, DNA, and RNA, is vital to life here. Plants can only use fixed nitrogen and the lack of fixed nitrogen is often the limiting factor in an ecosystem or for crops. Our ability to fix nitrogen ourselves seemed to be a perfect solution. However, the enormous blessings of the Haber Process are balanced by some pretty serious curses.

On the blessing side synthetic nitrogen fertilizer produced by the Haber Process is credited with feeding a third to half the present world population. In fact about half the nitrogen in each of our bodies is there thanks to the Haber Process.

Tar Sands.

1. We should extract tar sands first because they are more energy efficient.
2. The oil shale process involves drilling heater holes 1,000 to 2,000 feet down where they heat oil barring shale to very high temperatures. Tar sands are heated with hot water or steam to extract bitumen, which is heavy thick oil.
3. Tar sands are more efficient due to their better EROI.
4. Offshore drilling leads to lower carbon emissions overall.
5. I grab the first pen I see in my book bag, being that I don't want to have to dig for another one.

Topic 1: Public Health

• Antibiotics are one type of antimicrobial.
• Antimicrobials are substances that kill bacteria or suppress their multiplication or growth, and include antibiotics, some minerals, metals, and synthetic agents.
• The threat from antimicrobial resistance became more
  

  apparent in the 1990s as the number of cases of drugresistant

  infections increased in humans.
• ifap not only causes concerns about the health of theanimals present, but the basic production model creates
  concerns with respect to human health, as well.

"New public health concerns surrounding farm animals include foodborne diseases caused by bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella, and have a major impact in the United States. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) estimates 5,000 deaths and 76 million cases of food borne illness annually. The FDA reports that bacterial food borne disease is a growing problem worldwide and has been addressed in many reviews and reports on the topic.  Other pathogens that are of grave concern include avian influenza and mad cow disease.
There are also public health concerns surrounding animal hormones. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says there is a potential for natural and synthetic steroid hormones (e.g. estrogens, androgens, progestins) found in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) waste to reach groundwater aquifers and surface waters through a multitude of pathways (e.g. surface runoff, leaching from holding tanks and lagoons and composting facilities). Scientists say the occurrence of hormonally-active agents in surface water is of increasing concern worldwide, and has led to a growing awareness that human and wildlife health might be negatively impacted by hormones in the environment.
These and other public health concerns may stem from industrial animal production systems, which with some producers include the use of antibiotics as growth promoters. The FDA says the emergence of antimicrobial resistant and multi-drug resistant bacteria are evident in both humans and animals."


To fix these problems, we can stop using chemicals on animals and allow them to live in a cleaner environment.
http://www.ncifap.org/issues/public_health/