Will A Massive Asteroid Hit Earth In 2038? NASA's Hypothetical Exercise Shows 72% Chance
NASA has raised a concern over a theoretical scenario in which there is a 72% chance that an asteroid might reach Earth on July 12, 2038, and could pose a threat.
Even though there are no current threats, NASA's exercise highlights seriousness over how unprepared the human race is for such a massive threat.
Findings From NASA's Exercise
NASA conducted the fifth biennial Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise in April, according to an official report from the space agency. The exercise, which took place at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, was summarized by NASA and released on June 20.
Aside from NASA, around a hundred officials of different US government departments and foreign partners participated in the tabletop exercise.
Even though there aren't any known serious asteroid threats in the near future, this exercise was conducted to gauge how well Earth could react in the event that an asteroid became potentially dangerous.
“The uncertainties in these initial conditions for the exercise allowed participants to consider a particularly challenging set of circumstances,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer emeritus NASA Headquarters in Washington. “A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent", she added.
Just one year away from a 2025 deadline to reduce nitrate and phosphorus entering the Gulf by 20%, success seems unlikely.
The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a collaboration of state, federal and tribal agencies charged with controlling fertilizer pollution, told Congress last fall that nitrogen loads in the Mississippi River basin decreased 23% from the baseline period to 2021.
But the five-year running average – which accounts for extremely wet and dry years more common with climate change – tells a different story. By that measure, nitrogen is only slightly below baseline and well above the 20% target. Phosphorus loads worsened since the baseline period.
The oxygen-deprived "dead zone" in the Gulf is predicted to be 5,827 square miles this summer, 5% larger than average, according to a forecast last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two long-time Gulf researchers predict a smaller "dead zone," but only because of warming ocean temperatures, not because of progress reducing nutrients in the Mississippi River basin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in the 1970s to protect water, air and land from pollution. But when it comes to fertilizer choking the Gulf, the EPA – which chairs the task force – sees its role as more of a financier than enforcer.
“This is one of these areas where we have some regulatory authority, which I believe we are leveraging to the maximum ability that we have,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, the journalism collaborative that reported this story, in April regarding the EPA’s role in the task force goals.
“This is an area where we have to have partnerships, not only with the USDA, but with the agricultural community, to really design more creative and rewarding voluntary programs, as we think about how we look at agriculture, farming and other practices in this country,” Regan said.
‘Way behind’
Progress made so far reducing nutrients flowing to the Mississippi River is due to tighter standards for water treatment plants and other “point-source” polluters. But 70% of the nitrate load to the Gulf comes from nonpoint sources – mostly agriculture.
The number of U.S. acres planted with cover crops went up 75% from about 10.3 million acres in 2012 to nearly 18 million acres in 2022, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Cover crops including cereal rye, hairy vetch and camelina soak up excess nutrients and keep soil in place. Acres with reduced tillage – which cuts runoff – rose 27% during that time and no-till was up 9%.
These practices are done on a sliver of total harvested acres.
“We need every other field in some kind of winter cover to drive down nutrient loss,” said Sarah Carlson, an agronomist and senior programs and member engagement director with Practical Farmers of Iowa. “We are way, way behind. Not even close.”
Even with the government subsidizing conservation projects, many farmers just don’t want to risk reducing their short-term yields – money they use to feed their families and pay down debt.
Doug Downs, who farms about 2,000 acres of corn and soybeans in Champaign County, Illinois, experimented with cover crops in 2019. He planted one side of the road in cover crops and the other side without. It was a wet spring, which meant Downs had limited time to terminate his cover crops and his beans on that side went in late.
“My soybeans made 80 or 81 bushels… on my conventional tillage ground,” he said. “I lost $200 to the acre simply by having a cover crop.”
Carlson said farmers who are experiencing yield loss when using cover crops likely don’t have enough labor to plant and kill off the crops at the right times.
Big money, weak accountability
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) invested $14.2 billion between fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2021 on voluntary conservation programs and technical assistance in the 12 task force states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Inflation Reduction Act will spend another $19.5 billion across the country on climate-smart agriculture, which could include projects with water quality benefits.
Some states also have their own programs to pay for water quality projects. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship has spent $1.17 million, which includes federal money, to install saturated buffers and bioreactors to filter water from underground drainage tiles before it flows into streams. Farmers don’t have to pay anything for the projects and, in fact, get $1,000 for each practice added.
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