Earlier today, Paul Livingstone, editor of the R&D magazine, posted an interesting blog pointing out similarities between the government involvement in pushing ethanol and the soon to come government involvement in carbon sequestration. He pointed out some of the flaws of the ethanol movement, ("competition with food crops, low energy per square acre for corn-based production") and suggested that the flaw of carbon sequestration is "there is no direct economic impact of storing carbon (it won’t actually produce anything useful, unless we find a way to use porous rock filled with CO2)". Paul's entire blog can be viewed at http://www.rdmag.com/Community/Blogs/RDBlog/Carbon-sequestration--the-ethanol-of-the-next-decade-/
I posted the following as a comment to his blog.
Actually we have a use for something even better than porous rocks filled with CO2, it's called biochar. And it's a natural or man-made product. In the spring when farmers burn off the dead grass in the road side ditches, the black residue is not ash. Ash is grey. The black residue is biochar, charcoal made from biological material.
On the great plains of North America, the natural grass wildfires left this biochar and it accumulated over thousands of years, helping to create some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. If not pyrolyzed, the grass litter is acted on by microbes and nearly 100% of the carbon is returned to the atmosphere in 5 years. If pyrolyzed during the grass fire, about 25% of the carbon removed from the atmosphere during the photosynthesis remains as biochar.
Biochar is chemically stable in the soil for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. It has been effectively returned to the lithosphere.
This natural process can be part of modern agriculture. Agricultural waste can be pyrolyzed producing biochar. The biochar when mixed with compost and added to forest or farmland dramatically increases the fertility the soils. The biochar acts as reservoir for both water and fertilizer. The soil tolerates droughts better and less fertilizer needs to be added which means less fertilizer leaches past the root zone to contaminate ground water.
The process of pyrolyzation is exothermic. This released heat can be used for heating and perhaps for the generation of electricity.So agriculture can be done in a carbon-negative fashion. This isn’t just carbon-neutral, but actually carbon-negative. More carbon is stored as charcoal in the soil than was released to grow the food. This can create a new product for farmers to sell, the biochar. It might allow farmers to generate and sell clean electricity.
On August 9 – 12, 2009, in Boulder, CO, there was the first North American Biochar Conference. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, spoke at it. He summed up the potential of biochar nicely. It can provide a new source of income for rural areas. It can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It can help ecologically dispose of our agricultural waste. It can make help rebuild the topsoil of our farmlands. And it can remove carbon which is already in the atmosphere (carbon-negative), not just remove carbon we are currently putting into the atmosphere (carbon-neutral).
Perhaps the recent trends in climate are not human caused global warming. Perhaps it is all normal changes we just aren’t clever enough to predict. Maybe the expansion of the great deserts and the melting of the ice caps are all natural. After all, we still don’t have consensus on what caused the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were clever enough to find economical ways to control climate (even if it was a natural cycle) and we could prevent the wars and epidemics and extinctions that come with climate change (human or naturally caused).
We are that clever, and it is in the production of biochar. But the success of biochar depends on research and also on the energy bill that congress will pass this year. Congress controls too much money to be able to do the research needed in the timeframe needed without their help. Instead of another government dole out, this can be a win/win/win situation. And we need all the help we can get to help Congress pass a bill which allows this to happen. Perhaps you can help. For more information, I recommend starting at http://www.biochar-international.org/. Let me know if I can be of any other help to you.Posted by: Doug at 8/28/2009 11:25 PM
Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Biochar 5: David Yarrow: LIFE (Created 8-20-09)
On 8-11-09, at the North American Biochar Conference, I had the pleasure of hearing David Yarrow speak. At the end of his presentation, he received the loudest, longest applause of the entire conference. A link to David's blog is right here.
http://www.relocalize.net/blog/david_yarrow
His speech is reproduced here to the best of my abilities.
David Yarrow LIFE
North American Biochar conference 2009
8-11-09 2:00 pm
Show me the market: Nutrient-Dense, Carbon-Negative Food.
"My name is David Yarrow. I'm from the northeast and I've been teaching people about
biochar for two and a half years.
I felt someone made a mistake when they asked me to be on this panel because I've never been in business. I'm a healer. But I can certainly talk about high quality food for people so they can deal with their physiological crisis.
I think this is a way we can accomplish this and I'm worried that we aren't thinking largely enough about what it is we are dealing with. So I'm going to try and spin our microscope around and look thru the other end a little bit.
We have to start thinking much more about the whole context we are working in. The first thing I would like to tell you is you're probably not going to make much money selling biochar to farmers. They simply can't afford it or to put up a lot of money. I work mostly with small farmers and they would much rather learn to make their own rather than to buy it from somebody. That's the reality of their economics. Their economics says that they grow food and cash crops. They buy the seed because they know they have a market. And they grow food to feed consumers.
So if you want farmers to do something, give them a market.
So a market that we can offer them is the opportunity to sell Carbon-Negative Food. When I talk in the northeast about this people get very excited that they could go to the store and buy food that helps reverse global warming and address climate change. So this is a strategy we can put on the ground to create an identity in the marketplace for food grown with biochar. We get to attract consumers in this direction.
It's probably not going to work too well because most people aren't going to feel this is very attractive. It's not sexy enough.
But because of what biochar does in soils we have a little nicer opportunity to attract and develop consumer loyalty.
Charcoal soaks up nutrients in the soil and holds them and makes them available to the plants. So when you create that condition in your soil you create plants which are fully enriched with nutrition and you can begin to market nutrient dense food grown in that soil.
This is something which is already underway. It started about 25 years ago in Australia and New Zealand.
In February a hundred farmers showed up in Barry, MA and sat thru a three day training with Dr. Martin Anderson and he showed them how to begin to change their production systems to be able to produce commercially and market nutrient-dense food products. Food which has a guaranteed higher analysis than what the USDA started publishing when they first started publishing the nutrient content of our food.
We couldn't do that in the Eighties when we started the organic food system. We specifically restricted growers from making any nutritional claims for their products because we couldn't reliably produce that kind of food. We couldn't realiably get it to market. We couldn't verify. We couldn't authenticate.
But we can do all that now. And it's already happening.
One hundred farmers sat thru three days of training and at the end of it I wondered what they thought of this because I supported 100% what Martin Anderson was teaching. And they all stood up and gave him a very, very long standing ovation. They were very enthusiastic. I said to myself, "If there are a hundred farmers in New England who are pump up to go out and make this happen on their farms then the next revolution has begun. "
We are going to put a new standard of quality on the market and it’s probably going to take us two years. We already have lots of growers lining up because they want to do this. They believe in this.
Biochar is the key ingredient in making happen what they are trying to do.
But they can't buy it and what's the purpose in telling them about something they can't get their hands on. So the people in this room have a responsibility, I think, to work with this new movement and to help them understand how biochar is the key to what they are trying to achieve and to assist them to make it work in the marketplace.
It's hard work. We did this with organics in the eighties. I personally am not looking forward to doing it again. We have to create standards. We have to create trademarks. We have to create production processes which meet those standards. We have to create a system which provides the nuts and bolts and legal licensing and so on has to make this happen.
When I go around and do my talk about biochar and climate change at the end I ask people, "If we put a food product on the market which is carbon-negative and nutrient-dense do you think people will buy it?" The answer is very positive. And that's without much advertising or promotion.
The other part I want to talk about is to back up a little bit and look at the context I was just discussing. In New England we have a tradition called the town meeting. We have a social concern about how we go about doing things in our communities. And I saw this in the organic movement. We had small farms from New England which were sitting there representing social consciousness among the big farms from other parts of the country which were concerned about business and money.
What happens is New England always looks at how this is going to impact our way of life in our communities. And we need to look at how this technology develops communities instead of destroying communities as has been going on for far too long. We begin to implement these technologies in ways that support communities not only in America, but all over the world.
Because what we are dealing with here are the two most fundamental things that every community needs; food and energy. And if we deliver these things in ways that make sense, from their local resources, then that community has the food, the energy and the money to build an economy that works.
So we can not only repair the atmosphere, we can also begin to repair our economic systems, community by community, around the world; if we do this right.
So this is the other end of the telescope, to look at the total context of what happens when we bring this process into a social context. And how to organize as human beings and how we can use this as a way to regenerate our social structures, our economic structures, our financial structures and we can make economies that serve communities.
I call this LIFE: Locally Integrated Food and Energy. It's an idea I've been carrying for about 25 years because I became concerned how to use food policy as a way to drive agriculture and create a sustainable regional food system because I saw the climate curve 35 years ago and I thought "How are we going to feed ourselves?"
I think we need to go forward with this business development. It's really critical. What we need to have happen is to incubate businesses and develop this industry.
But we also need to recognize the social impact of what we are doing and to go about this in ways which make sense. For example, in the Northeast, we are not interested in industrial sized power plants and communities are already organizing to fight them off. The government of course is taking sides with the large scale developers.
What people want is farm scaled equipment, which can be used on our farms on our scale of operations. Mobile power plants which can be taken to the field site. We also want cook stoves which we can use in our houses and wood stoves that will heat our houses and also produce biochar.
One thing that we are very concerned about is how we are going to grow food in our northeast winters when we can't predict the weather and climate and we get extremes. So we want to be able to grow food under cover and this is a very good way to heat that structure and produce a key ingredient for our soil while we are growing food inside of it. Those are the things that make sense to us.
We would rather see a million stoves being cranked out of a factory to go in houses and produce jobs in our communities than to see a megawatt reactor down the road ripping up our forests. These are the kinds of concerns that become part of this community supportive approach to help us implement this technology.
I'll close by mentioning that the shirt I am wearing was given to me by the man who drove me to the airport to fly here. He is from India. I would like us all to remember that what we are doing here is not only going to impact our own society but can lead the way for the world.
Thank you. "
http://www.relocalize.net/blog/david_yarrow
His speech is reproduced here to the best of my abilities.
David Yarrow LIFE
North American Biochar conference 2009
8-11-09 2:00 pm
Show me the market: Nutrient-Dense, Carbon-Negative Food.
"My name is David Yarrow. I'm from the northeast and I've been teaching people about
biochar for two and a half years.
I felt someone made a mistake when they asked me to be on this panel because I've never been in business. I'm a healer. But I can certainly talk about high quality food for people so they can deal with their physiological crisis.
I think this is a way we can accomplish this and I'm worried that we aren't thinking largely enough about what it is we are dealing with. So I'm going to try and spin our microscope around and look thru the other end a little bit.
We have to start thinking much more about the whole context we are working in. The first thing I would like to tell you is you're probably not going to make much money selling biochar to farmers. They simply can't afford it or to put up a lot of money. I work mostly with small farmers and they would much rather learn to make their own rather than to buy it from somebody. That's the reality of their economics. Their economics says that they grow food and cash crops. They buy the seed because they know they have a market. And they grow food to feed consumers.
So if you want farmers to do something, give them a market.
So a market that we can offer them is the opportunity to sell Carbon-Negative Food. When I talk in the northeast about this people get very excited that they could go to the store and buy food that helps reverse global warming and address climate change. So this is a strategy we can put on the ground to create an identity in the marketplace for food grown with biochar. We get to attract consumers in this direction.
It's probably not going to work too well because most people aren't going to feel this is very attractive. It's not sexy enough.
But because of what biochar does in soils we have a little nicer opportunity to attract and develop consumer loyalty.
Charcoal soaks up nutrients in the soil and holds them and makes them available to the plants. So when you create that condition in your soil you create plants which are fully enriched with nutrition and you can begin to market nutrient dense food grown in that soil.
This is something which is already underway. It started about 25 years ago in Australia and New Zealand.
In February a hundred farmers showed up in Barry, MA and sat thru a three day training with Dr. Martin Anderson and he showed them how to begin to change their production systems to be able to produce commercially and market nutrient-dense food products. Food which has a guaranteed higher analysis than what the USDA started publishing when they first started publishing the nutrient content of our food.
We couldn't do that in the Eighties when we started the organic food system. We specifically restricted growers from making any nutritional claims for their products because we couldn't reliably produce that kind of food. We couldn't realiably get it to market. We couldn't verify. We couldn't authenticate.
But we can do all that now. And it's already happening.
One hundred farmers sat thru three days of training and at the end of it I wondered what they thought of this because I supported 100% what Martin Anderson was teaching. And they all stood up and gave him a very, very long standing ovation. They were very enthusiastic. I said to myself, "If there are a hundred farmers in New England who are pump up to go out and make this happen on their farms then the next revolution has begun. "
We are going to put a new standard of quality on the market and it’s probably going to take us two years. We already have lots of growers lining up because they want to do this. They believe in this.
Biochar is the key ingredient in making happen what they are trying to do.
But they can't buy it and what's the purpose in telling them about something they can't get their hands on. So the people in this room have a responsibility, I think, to work with this new movement and to help them understand how biochar is the key to what they are trying to achieve and to assist them to make it work in the marketplace.
It's hard work. We did this with organics in the eighties. I personally am not looking forward to doing it again. We have to create standards. We have to create trademarks. We have to create production processes which meet those standards. We have to create a system which provides the nuts and bolts and legal licensing and so on has to make this happen.
When I go around and do my talk about biochar and climate change at the end I ask people, "If we put a food product on the market which is carbon-negative and nutrient-dense do you think people will buy it?" The answer is very positive. And that's without much advertising or promotion.
The other part I want to talk about is to back up a little bit and look at the context I was just discussing. In New England we have a tradition called the town meeting. We have a social concern about how we go about doing things in our communities. And I saw this in the organic movement. We had small farms from New England which were sitting there representing social consciousness among the big farms from other parts of the country which were concerned about business and money.
What happens is New England always looks at how this is going to impact our way of life in our communities. And we need to look at how this technology develops communities instead of destroying communities as has been going on for far too long. We begin to implement these technologies in ways that support communities not only in America, but all over the world.
Because what we are dealing with here are the two most fundamental things that every community needs; food and energy. And if we deliver these things in ways that make sense, from their local resources, then that community has the food, the energy and the money to build an economy that works.
So we can not only repair the atmosphere, we can also begin to repair our economic systems, community by community, around the world; if we do this right.
So this is the other end of the telescope, to look at the total context of what happens when we bring this process into a social context. And how to organize as human beings and how we can use this as a way to regenerate our social structures, our economic structures, our financial structures and we can make economies that serve communities.
I call this LIFE: Locally Integrated Food and Energy. It's an idea I've been carrying for about 25 years because I became concerned how to use food policy as a way to drive agriculture and create a sustainable regional food system because I saw the climate curve 35 years ago and I thought "How are we going to feed ourselves?"
I think we need to go forward with this business development. It's really critical. What we need to have happen is to incubate businesses and develop this industry.
But we also need to recognize the social impact of what we are doing and to go about this in ways which make sense. For example, in the Northeast, we are not interested in industrial sized power plants and communities are already organizing to fight them off. The government of course is taking sides with the large scale developers.
What people want is farm scaled equipment, which can be used on our farms on our scale of operations. Mobile power plants which can be taken to the field site. We also want cook stoves which we can use in our houses and wood stoves that will heat our houses and also produce biochar.
One thing that we are very concerned about is how we are going to grow food in our northeast winters when we can't predict the weather and climate and we get extremes. So we want to be able to grow food under cover and this is a very good way to heat that structure and produce a key ingredient for our soil while we are growing food inside of it. Those are the things that make sense to us.
We would rather see a million stoves being cranked out of a factory to go in houses and produce jobs in our communities than to see a megawatt reactor down the road ripping up our forests. These are the kinds of concerns that become part of this community supportive approach to help us implement this technology.
I'll close by mentioning that the shirt I am wearing was given to me by the man who drove me to the airport to fly here. He is from India. I would like us all to remember that what we are doing here is not only going to impact our own society but can lead the way for the world.
Thank you. "
Hypography Science Forum
Mr. Erich Knight sent me a link to the Hypography science forum and the discussion concerning biochar and terra preta. I have not followed and read everything the links connect, but it looks like a good thing to share.
I did not know about this hypography forum, Thank you for sharing Erich,
http://hypography.com/forums/terra-preta/3451-terra-preta-parent-thread-started-all-14.html
Bye for now, Doug
I did not know about this hypography forum, Thank you for sharing Erich,
http://hypography.com/forums/terra-preta/3451-terra-preta-parent-thread-started-all-14.html
Bye for now, Doug
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
BioChar 4: The USA Secretary of Agriculture (created 8-11-09)
Yesterday, at the North American Biochar Conference - 2009, the Secretary of the USDA spoke with us for an hour. I had no intention of devoting a blog to what he had to say, but it was too good not to pass on.
Whether you voted for President Obama or not, (I did not), you should admit that he is doing things in a different way. When he was still President-Elect Obama, he asked Tom Vilsack to be his Secretary of Agriculture. He told Mr. Vilsack, that if he accepted, that he had two main expectations.
The two main expectations were that the Department of Agriculture would be engaged in 1) leading the country off of fossil fuels and in 2) creating a more vibrant rural economy.
Secretary Vilsack summed up the driving force behind those two instructions in four imperatives which President Obama has recognized.
1) There is significant risk in not taking action in stopping global warming. It will create more violent weather and will affect agriculture and animal health and human health.
2) Leading the way is important to our national security. The world expects the USA to lead and when we don't, we further loose credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.
3) The USA needs better energy security. We need alternative ways to produce everything.
4) The USA needs a stronger rural economy so it is viable for families to move back to rural areas.
Mr. Vilsack spoke about how the administration is now recognizing biochar production coupled with energy production as one of the ways to meet all four of these imperatives. Biochar production removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeps it out of the atmosphere much longer then growing biomass does. There is a real opportunity for the USA to research and figure out the details of making different types of biochar to match the needs of local soils around the globe. There is a significant amount of electricity and space heating which can be done with the heat released while making biochar. The potential size of the new rural markets for making biochar/energy is estimated at between 5 and 20 billion dollars per year.
Mr. Vilsack answered questions for about 30 minutes. This author was very impressed with the answers. In response to one question about the budget set for the forest service, Mr. Vilsack outlined the 4 goals he has set for the USDA to use in creating its 2011 budget. All funded activities in the USDA in 2011 will have to address at least one of those four goals. The goals are:
1) Wealth creation opportunities for rural economies.
2) Support the forest service.
3) Global security and expansion of trade
4) Ensuring all children has safe, nutritious balanced meals.
That is the type of goal setting and holding people accountable for their activities and spending that I am used to in a successful private business. I was glad to see it being enacted in a governmental bureaucracy. I wish Mr. Vilsack all the success in the world.
Bye for now, Doug
Whether you voted for President Obama or not, (I did not), you should admit that he is doing things in a different way. When he was still President-Elect Obama, he asked Tom Vilsack to be his Secretary of Agriculture. He told Mr. Vilsack, that if he accepted, that he had two main expectations.
The two main expectations were that the Department of Agriculture would be engaged in 1) leading the country off of fossil fuels and in 2) creating a more vibrant rural economy.
Secretary Vilsack summed up the driving force behind those two instructions in four imperatives which President Obama has recognized.
1) There is significant risk in not taking action in stopping global warming. It will create more violent weather and will affect agriculture and animal health and human health.
2) Leading the way is important to our national security. The world expects the USA to lead and when we don't, we further loose credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.
3) The USA needs better energy security. We need alternative ways to produce everything.
4) The USA needs a stronger rural economy so it is viable for families to move back to rural areas.
Mr. Vilsack spoke about how the administration is now recognizing biochar production coupled with energy production as one of the ways to meet all four of these imperatives. Biochar production removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and keeps it out of the atmosphere much longer then growing biomass does. There is a real opportunity for the USA to research and figure out the details of making different types of biochar to match the needs of local soils around the globe. There is a significant amount of electricity and space heating which can be done with the heat released while making biochar. The potential size of the new rural markets for making biochar/energy is estimated at between 5 and 20 billion dollars per year.
Mr. Vilsack answered questions for about 30 minutes. This author was very impressed with the answers. In response to one question about the budget set for the forest service, Mr. Vilsack outlined the 4 goals he has set for the USDA to use in creating its 2011 budget. All funded activities in the USDA in 2011 will have to address at least one of those four goals. The goals are:
1) Wealth creation opportunities for rural economies.
2) Support the forest service.
3) Global security and expansion of trade
4) Ensuring all children has safe, nutritious balanced meals.
That is the type of goal setting and holding people accountable for their activities and spending that I am used to in a successful private business. I was glad to see it being enacted in a governmental bureaucracy. I wish Mr. Vilsack all the success in the world.
Bye for now, Doug
Sunday, August 9, 2009
BioChar 3: (created 8-9-09)
Today is Sunday and the first day of the North American Biochar Conference-2009. It's appropriate that a group of people all hoping to save the planet would start work on a Sunday.
Today we toured the production facilities of Biochar Engineering in Golden, Colorado and they demonstrated the making of biochar from woodchips. They are a startup company and their first system ships tomorrow. It is capable of turning 1000 lbs. of wood chips into 200 lbs. of biochar every hour.
I met people from all over the world. There is Mike from southern California. He was a dry dairy farmer and got out of farming because he couldn't stomach the practices the farmers have to do to make a living; specifically, the over application of dairy farm manure to farm fields. He has been trying to make a biochar system to turn dairy manure into biochar which wouldn't have the over application problem.
J. Steven B. works for a company looking for the biomass problem of sugar cane production. Before sugar cane is harvested, the top 1/3 of the plant is cut off and left on the ground. It is mostly leaves with little sugar. The rest of the plant is harvested and brought to the processing facility to extract the sugar. The third of the plant left on the ground is just open burned on the ground to ash. And there are growing air quality concerns with this practice. The rest of the plant is processed by squeezing out the sugar containing liquid. The left over dried stalk material is called bagasse and there is a lot of it. They can burn it for the heat to run the sugar cane mill. Some companies are using it to make disposable food storage boxes, to replace Styrofoam boxes restaurants put your leftovers in. Steven is checking out if biochar would be a good product to make from the bagasse.
There was a demonstration of TLUD stoves. TLUD is Top Lit UpDraft stoves. These are simple devices being promoted for the third world to create a relatively clean burn of scraps of organic matter to both release heat for cooking and to create biochar which either be sold as charcoal, or worked into their garden soil. They are also being targeted in this country for campstoves.
Most of today was spent giving us time to learn a little about each other. Every conference I've ever been to before we were giving about 30 minutes. Today, we had 8 hours. It was excellent. I'm excited for more.
Bye for now, Doug
Today we toured the production facilities of Biochar Engineering in Golden, Colorado and they demonstrated the making of biochar from woodchips. They are a startup company and their first system ships tomorrow. It is capable of turning 1000 lbs. of wood chips into 200 lbs. of biochar every hour.
I met people from all over the world. There is Mike from southern California. He was a dry dairy farmer and got out of farming because he couldn't stomach the practices the farmers have to do to make a living; specifically, the over application of dairy farm manure to farm fields. He has been trying to make a biochar system to turn dairy manure into biochar which wouldn't have the over application problem.
J. Steven B. works for a company looking for the biomass problem of sugar cane production. Before sugar cane is harvested, the top 1/3 of the plant is cut off and left on the ground. It is mostly leaves with little sugar. The rest of the plant is harvested and brought to the processing facility to extract the sugar. The third of the plant left on the ground is just open burned on the ground to ash. And there are growing air quality concerns with this practice. The rest of the plant is processed by squeezing out the sugar containing liquid. The left over dried stalk material is called bagasse and there is a lot of it. They can burn it for the heat to run the sugar cane mill. Some companies are using it to make disposable food storage boxes, to replace Styrofoam boxes restaurants put your leftovers in. Steven is checking out if biochar would be a good product to make from the bagasse.
There was a demonstration of TLUD stoves. TLUD is Top Lit UpDraft stoves. These are simple devices being promoted for the third world to create a relatively clean burn of scraps of organic matter to both release heat for cooking and to create biochar which either be sold as charcoal, or worked into their garden soil. They are also being targeted in this country for campstoves.
Most of today was spent giving us time to learn a little about each other. Every conference I've ever been to before we were giving about 30 minutes. Today, we had 8 hours. It was excellent. I'm excited for more.
Bye for now, Doug
Saturday, August 8, 2009
BioChar 2: What is my interest in biochar?(created 8-8-09)
So what is my interest in biochar? After a 25 year career as a scientist, chemist, engineer, and the “make it so" guy in industry, I spent the last two years teaching physics and physical science in a rural Wisconsin high school. The last topic we covered in the physical science class this past year was "the carbon cycle" and what the ramifications of our use of fossil fuels might be. I didn't insist on the kids accepting the current theory and fears of global warming. Most of them already knew enough to question how accurate the predictions are of global warming caused by human activity. With the drastic climate changes during the past 10,000 year not being explained by current climate change models, it is difficult to take the predictions seriously.
The side effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which I stressed cannot be ignored is ocean acidification. The kids learned that there are two large scale methods of moving carbon to long term storage in the lithosphere; 1) the aging of rocks (silicates react with atmospheric carbon dioxide creating bicarbonates and carbonates and silicon dioxide (sand). (Look for a future blog where I wonder why this isn't done on purpose in power plants to remove the carbon dioxide from the exhaust gasses.) The carbonates wash down the water sheds to the oceans. And 2) carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans forming more bicarbonates and carbonates and living creatures use these ions to build shells and tests. These shells and tests eventually settle to the ocean floor, creating limestone rock. As the ocean becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for the creatures to turn the carbonates into shells and tests. This is bad news. Make the world warmer, and weather patterns change, some species don't adapt and die, more wars occur as populations shift. Kill the oceans and everything dies.
My challenge to them was to figure out how to prevent ocean acidification. We explored growing biomass and making compost and biofuels. None of these activities reduced the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide for a long period of time. The one activity they found which moves carbon dioxide back to the lithosphere for an extended period of time is making biochar. And it has the advantages that the biochar makes our farmland, gardens and forests more productive and energy is released during the production of biochar which can be used to make electricity or biofuels.
I got so excited about this that I have spent my summer learning how to make biochar from my dried grass clippings and hay and am attending the North American Biochar Conference - 2009 in Boulder, CO.
I will post my notes about the biochar conference here on my blog. The conference runs from 8-9-09 thru 8-12-09.
Bye for now, Doug
The side effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which I stressed cannot be ignored is ocean acidification. The kids learned that there are two large scale methods of moving carbon to long term storage in the lithosphere; 1) the aging of rocks (silicates react with atmospheric carbon dioxide creating bicarbonates and carbonates and silicon dioxide (sand). (Look for a future blog where I wonder why this isn't done on purpose in power plants to remove the carbon dioxide from the exhaust gasses.) The carbonates wash down the water sheds to the oceans. And 2) carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans forming more bicarbonates and carbonates and living creatures use these ions to build shells and tests. These shells and tests eventually settle to the ocean floor, creating limestone rock. As the ocean becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for the creatures to turn the carbonates into shells and tests. This is bad news. Make the world warmer, and weather patterns change, some species don't adapt and die, more wars occur as populations shift. Kill the oceans and everything dies.
My challenge to them was to figure out how to prevent ocean acidification. We explored growing biomass and making compost and biofuels. None of these activities reduced the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide for a long period of time. The one activity they found which moves carbon dioxide back to the lithosphere for an extended period of time is making biochar. And it has the advantages that the biochar makes our farmland, gardens and forests more productive and energy is released during the production of biochar which can be used to make electricity or biofuels.
I got so excited about this that I have spent my summer learning how to make biochar from my dried grass clippings and hay and am attending the North American Biochar Conference - 2009 in Boulder, CO.
I will post my notes about the biochar conference here on my blog. The conference runs from 8-9-09 thru 8-12-09.
Bye for now, Doug
Friday, August 7, 2009
BioChar 1 (created 8-7-09)
We've all seen biochar but probably didn't have any idea that it has the potential to save the world. Have you ever made toast that went to far. The black stuff is biochar. Go too far when toasting a marshmallow over a campfire, the black stuff is biochar. In the spring, some country people burn off the dead grass in the road side ditch. The black stuff left is biochar. Before the European Americans settled the Great Plains and tilled it into farmland, there were natural, periodic grass fires which swept across the land. It left behind a thin layer of black biochar. This biochar built up over thousands of years is why the Great Plains were so incredibly fertile and the early farmers reported top soil "six feet deep."
Biochar is a form of activated carbon, similar to the universal antidote used by doctors. Biochar acts like a molecular sponge. It absorbs molecules which are in excess around them and then releases those molecules when they are no longer in excess. So when biochar is incorporated into the soil, it absorbs water when it rains and hold onto it until a dry spell and then releases the water for the plants roots. Biochar absorbs nutrients when in excess, as when a farmer or yard owner applies fertilizer, and releases it as the plant roots need it. Biochar protects the ground water from many forms of pollution.
Biochar won't protect the soil and groundwater from everything. It is not a panacea. In a future blog, I will expose some of the horribly silly things people are talking about doing with biochar.
Bye for now, Doug
Biochar is a form of activated carbon, similar to the universal antidote used by doctors. Biochar acts like a molecular sponge. It absorbs molecules which are in excess around them and then releases those molecules when they are no longer in excess. So when biochar is incorporated into the soil, it absorbs water when it rains and hold onto it until a dry spell and then releases the water for the plants roots. Biochar absorbs nutrients when in excess, as when a farmer or yard owner applies fertilizer, and releases it as the plant roots need it. Biochar protects the ground water from many forms of pollution.
Biochar won't protect the soil and groundwater from everything. It is not a panacea. In a future blog, I will expose some of the horribly silly things people are talking about doing with biochar.
Bye for now, Doug
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
My first blog
My better, smarter half has been after me to set up a blog. Here it is, my very first one. Many more to follow.
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