Well I agree that the oil argument isn’t very good. But I don’t think the conclusion is “no cause for panic.”

I think water loss (especially from aquifers but also just drought and river diversion in California), soil erosion, habitat loss, and homogenisation are big worries. We’ve seen big problems from soil loss before in America where the prairie grass with its deep root systems holding the soil together was replaced by cereal crops with short roots and plowing exposing the soil. The result was the dust bowl.

If you don't have topsoil you don't have water retention and you don't have organisms and structure that avoids the need to till for aeration and mineral movement. That means the garbage soil we're left with must be watered from aquifers when it's not constantly raining, and we must till the soil then work in fertilizers, which wastes gas and time.

The path you say has "no cause for panic" is a path to cyclical famine in 50-100 years.

The path to famine is exponential population growth. No need for agriculture to fail as well. We do have bigger fish to fry than worry about soil quality as long as it is still fixable with fertilizer.

Personally I think the way of life that is destroying the topsoil is at the heart of most of our problems, and if we reverted to a more pastoral life where people are more connected to nature and the food they eat in some way a lot of issues we're facing would magically disappear. Most depression, obesity (with related health issues) and a good part of climate change are all a result of our messed up lifestyles.

Explain the reaction that turns electricity into nitrogen based fertilizer. What are the other inputs and outputs of the process? Are you forgetting the most important ingredient?

The Haber-Bosch reaction is what turns atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) into ammonia. Ammonia can be oxidized to make nitric acid and nitrate fertilizers, combined with carbon dioxide to make urea, or used as-is for fertilizer. The inputs to the Haber-Bosch reaction are hydrogen and nitrogen gases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

The nitrogen is easily separated from air. The hydrogen is the energetically expensive input. Most hydrogen is presently made by steam reforming fossil fuels. Hydrogen can also be produced from water and electricity via electrolysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water

In the 20th century, surplus hydroelectric power from dams was used to electrolyze water for making ammonia. More direct demand for electricity and cheaper processes for making hydrogen from fossil fuels gradually eliminated it. Now people are planning to bring back large scale electrolytic hydrogen for fossil-free hydrogen from renewables:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/canada-is-set-to-have-one-th...

https://www.chemengonline.com/uniper-unveils-plans-for-germa...

So the process can hypothetically run from renewable energy in the future, but the primary energy source and primary source of hydrogen are probably both methane right now.

Methane can be and sometimes is produced from biomass.

And there are a few plants in operation that produce without any fossil inputs, but most of them aren't switched over yet, mostly because green hydrogen production isn't at the necessary scale yet and will probably be used for steel making first.

Perhaps a simple explanation would be to quantify the inputs and outputs, maybe from year to year. For instance the carbon footprint of farming should be shrinking if all of these green measures are coming online.

Rapeseed oil isn't green energy. It's just more big-Ag.

With that attitude we can just go back to the caves. Big-anything is what makes our society and level of population work, without Big-Ag we couldn't feed everyone. Without Big-Trans we couldn't distribute the food. Without Big-Trade, you would have to inefficiently buy from 20 small shops selling one item each. Without Big-Industry, your kitchen implements would be a pot and a kettle above the fireplace.

Rapeseed oil maybe isn't a perfect solution. But whining about everything that makes headway just because it isn't perfect yet also holds us back.

What a strange stance to take in a thread about how big-Ag has destroyed a third of US topsoil.

You've been brainwashed.