“A Fertilizer Trading Market?” Anthony Watts uses a University of Maryland report on agricultural practices to smear the failed Chicago Climate Exchange and mutter about governments trying to control the lives of Americans.
From the Multiple Ecosystem Markets in Maryland report:
The researchers conclude that setting up a “trading market,” where farmers earn financial incentives for investing in eco-friendly techniques, would result in a double environmental benefit – reducing fertilizer run-off destined for the Chesapeake Bay, while at the same time capturing carbon dioxide headed for the atmosphere.
Of course howling “bullshit” is the closest Anthony comes to critical thought, so it must be hard for him to resist.
Wott's Up With That? 
Lake Erie before showed signs of no sewage treatment whatsoever: floating turds floating down the creek, condoms washed up on the beach. But then the point sources were controlled by the water pollution laws, and federal money, of the early 1970’s.
Non-point sources remain. In most cases, farm run-off goes downriver and out of state, or directly into the ocean or Gulf. Maryland (consider the map) must live with its wastes and the waste from upstream states.
“Chesapeake Bay”
“Deterioating environmental conditions”
“In the 1970’s, the Chesapeake Bay was discovered to contain one of the planet’s first identified marine dead zones, where hypoxic waters were so depleted of oxygen they were unable to support life, resulting in massive fish killls. Today the bay’s dead zones are estimated to kill 75,000 tons of bottom-dwelling clams and worms each year, weakening the base of the estuary’s food chain and robbing the blue crab in particular of a primary food source. Crabs themselves are sometimes observed to amass on shore to escape pockets of oxygen-poor water, a behaviour known as a crab “jubilee”. Hypoxia results in part from large algal blooms, which are nourished by the runoff of farm and industrial waste throughout the watershed. The runoff-off and pollution have many components that help contribute to the algal blooms which is mainly fed by phosphorus and nitrogen. This algae prevents sunlight from reaching the bottom of the (shallow) bay while alive and deoxygenates the bay’s water when it dies and rots…”
Wikipedia
But Anthony says that these “farmers really don’t want yet another intrusion into their lives…”