Comments on: The Surprising Way Climate Change Could Make Soil More Toxic https://scitechdaily.com/the-surprising-way-climate-change-could-make-soil-more-toxic/ Science, Space and Technology News 2024 Thu, 15 Aug 2024 13:55:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 By: Boba https://scitechdaily.com/the-surprising-way-climate-change-could-make-soil-more-toxic/#comment-855603 Wed, 14 Aug 2024 22:51:22 +0000 https://scitechdaily.com/?p=404917#comment-855603 Ah, so the “experts” finally admit increased CO2 is good for the plants! Do you realize how good this news is?

Whatever reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers in agriculture going forward is great.

]]> By: Clyde Spencer https://scitechdaily.com/the-surprising-way-climate-change-could-make-soil-more-toxic/#comment-855575 Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:51:23 +0000 https://scitechdaily.com/?p=404917#comment-855575 The issue isn’t just the presence of mercury, it is the concentration of bio-available mercury, which is primarily methylmercury found in anaerobic environments, such as wetlands. The concern should be about moving up the food chain from bacteria, fungi, and earthworms to higher order animals. What these researchers should be looking at is the concentration of mercury in plants and/or mercury vapor above the ground. The low vapor pressure for mercury is probably why the concentrations are found to be low in “bare land such as shrubland or grassland.” It long ago vaporized and moved elsewhere. Conversely, the presence in permafrost can be attributed to immobility because of the low temperatures. Conversation with a USGS geologist in the Sacramento (CA) office, whose specialty was mercury in the former gold-mining areas of the California Mother Lode, where mercury is quite abundant, acknowledged that he had not observed obvious symptoms in the native wildlife, unlike in Minamata.

This appears to be a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. While mercury can and does move up the food chain, primarily in the form of methylmercury, it seems that they know little about the uptake of mercury by plants that are eaten by insects and herbivores. The reason that coal is a source of mercury is that plants have always taken up mercury, and as the dead plants have been compressed, desiccated, and transformed into coal, the mercury has stayed behind. Something else that should be explored is if life has evolved with the ability to tolerate low levels of background mercury. Every time there is a volcanic eruption or forest fire, mercury is released into the atmosphere. It isn’t going to go away.

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