momma nature pwnage

[Dokomo]

Dak, can you account for how much Nitrogen would rise through the atmostphere and how much would stay near ground level to be absorbed? I'd do the calculations of the weight of the atmosphere in one square mile but I'm fairly vertain its tens of magnitudes bigger than 420 lbs.

[dak]

Nitrogen would be released into the air through denitrification mainly. Thing is denitrification takes place by bacteria acting on NO3+(nitrate) which has already been created by nitrification. The soil has already been acidified.

...hmm now that I come to think about it though denitrification takes nets about even on H+ ions.

I guess it depends on the microbes ability to process the nitrogen in soil as grossly oversaturated as the "half asia" scenario. I know nothing about that so I regress to just saying it would smell really bad.

[Eomer]

Birdflu is such a crock, it's the fucking flu, it's not gonna wipe out countries of people. Two years from now it will be in the same bin as the KILLAH BEEZ!!121one! and SARS.

The last super flu, the Spanish flu in the early part of the 20th century (after or during WWI I think?) killed something like 50 million people over a few months. And coincidentally some researchers just recreated it by digging up frozen human bodies and piecing the DNA together. Turns out it looks a lot like a bird flu as well.

Granted, our medical abilities have gotten a lot better in the past 100 or so years, but think of how fast a contagious flu like that would move across the planet in today's world. Eventually one of them is going to jump from birds to humans, and it'll kill at the very least a few million people. Look what SARS managed to do, and it wasn't airborne I don't think.

[Phoenix]

Yeah and its pretty obviously SARS didnt do enough, just look at WoW!

[bcware]

Originally Posted by dak

1. Yes, but when enough is around to drop the pH of soil below 5.5 it causes the roots of plants to become soluble to to aluminium. Aluminium in roots is toxic.

2. Fixed nitrogen is.

3. The nitrogen is there, it's not "fixed" though and is unusable for organic consumption. The microorganisms/fungus "fix" the nitrogen, not provide it.

4. Loaded with Nitrate, you don't need to worry about nitrification producing hydrogen to acidify the soil.

5. When organic matter decomposes it releases nitrogen in the form of ammonia(NH4+). Nitrification occurs under oxidizing conditions....

2NH4+ (ammonium) + 3O2 --> 2NO3- (nitrate) + 4H+ (acidic hydrogen) + 2H2O

*think I balanced that right, it's late.


I may be wrong, it's been a while since I gave a damn about any of this stuff but I *think* that's how it works.

Thank you, sir.

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by Eomer

Look what SARS managed to do, and it wasn't airborne I don't think.

SARS didn't do jack shit really. Never understood why it got hyped, more people probably died from Coke machines falling on them than SARS.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...777200168.html

Note: that's only one reference, there were others with different numbers, but all extremely low. It gets my point across~

[Frawdo]

Dak, how much of this "nitrogen" could be "harvested" and made into "NOS" to make my "civic" go "fast"?

Riced out, indeed.

[Eomer]

SARS didn't do jack shit really. Never understood why it got hyped, more people probably died from Coke machines falling on them than SARS.

Thousands of people infected around the world in only a matter of a few days by a pathogen that, from what I recall, isn't even airborne? 700+ dead? If you can't see SARS as a warning sign of what a highly contagious airborne disease could do to the world, you're fucking blind.

[Peacecraft]

God is pissed

[Lenardo]

actually YOU do the math... if spread evenly across asia, that much nitrogen would do jack and shit.

Average amount of nitrogen in the average 150lb human is 4.5lb. The population of Asia is around 3,622,994,130. Half that is 1,811,497,065 making for 7,245,988,260 pounds or 3,622,994 tons of nitrogen.

Asia is 17,226,000 square miles in size making for a nitrogen load of 420.64 lb/square mile. The majority of a bodies nitrogen will be released into the environment after about 40-50 days. Soil pH below 5.5 is toxic to a large portion of plants, 420 lb/square mile would be past the critical load of acidity for these plants.

17226000 square miles
7,245,988,260 lb of nitrogen

420lb per square mile

there are 640 ACRES in a square mile

420/640 or 0.65lb per Acre

there are 43,560 square feet in an acre
0.65/43560= 0.0000150 lb per square foot.

that much nitrogen -spread evenly- across asia would do Absolutely NOTHING to the environment.

An asian Elephant every day drops more than that much nitrogen onto the ground when they take a dump...

edit: oops forgot the per acre part for the elephant.

[Kallian]

Originally Posted by Lenardo

actually YOU do the math... if spread evenly across asia, that much nitrogen would do jack and shit.



17226000 square miles
7,245,988,260 lb of nitrogen

420lb per square mile

there are 640 ACRES in a square mile

420/640 or 0.65lb per Acre

there are 43,560 square feet in an acre
0.65/43560= 0.0000150 lb per square foot.

that much nitrogen -spread evenly- across asia would do Absolutely NOTHING to the environment.

An asian Elephant every day drops more than that much nitrogen onto the ground when they take a dump...

Is that ya'lls final answer?

[Bralkan]

every person that has had the H5N1 strain of the flu has died. Thats why its scary. 100% kill rate = bad news if the bird-to-human virus is able to steal some DNA from human-to-human virus and is then able to pass from human-to-human. Millions of people get the flu each year but most recover and go on with their life.

The precautions taken by the US and the EU are pretty much meaningless. They are developing vaccines on a strain of the virus that isn't the final version so to speak. So there is no guarentee that the vaccine will even work on the mutated form of H5N1. Second, becasue vaccine production is being monopolized by the west, the countries that need the medicine first will not be able to aquire it.

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by Eomer

Thousands of people infected around the world in only a matter of a few days by a pathogen that, from what I recall, isn't even airborne? 700+ dead? If you can't see SARS as a warning sign of what a highly contagious airborne disease could do to the world, you're fucking blind.

Oh, I didn't understand what you were implying with your SARS mention. My bad. Yeah it's pretty easy to imagine what an airborne disease with high kill rates is gona do to us.

And curious, why did all those asians have on those dusk masks if SARS wasn't airborne?

[Kilivek]

Originally Posted by Hateyou

Oh, I didn't understand what you were implying with your SARS mention. My bad. Yeah it's pretty easy to imagine what an airborne disease with high kill rates is gona do to us.

And curious, why did all those asians have on those dusk masks if SARS wasn't airborne?

why did the citizens of salem hang women for witchcraft if they weren't really witches?

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by Kilivek

why did the citizens of salem hang women for witchcraft if they weren't really witches?

Duh, because they didn't have the internet to dogpile on message board rejects.