Here are some Questions and Suggestions I sent to Allan Balliett for his interview with Charles C. Mann
Questions:
1. Is Mr. Mann aware of Danny Day's Eprida work, that they are a social purpose firm, designing equipment and a business model that will not cost the farmer anything out of pocket and create a many fold increase in rural high pay employment.
And this commercial , larger industrial scale effort of a similar closed-loop pyrolysis system now on the market:
BEST Pyrolysis, Inc. | Slow Pyrolysis - Biomass - Clean Energy - Renewable Energy - Char - green coal - pelletized fuel - syngas for electrical generation - carbon credits - increases rural jobs and construction development
2. Given that, as Lehmann at Cornell points out, "systems such as Day's are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative". and that " a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions! "
What does Mr Mann suggest to implement the grand convergence we need for this technology to be brought front and center?:
In academia; among Engineers, agronomist, soil geologist,anthropologist, bio-chemist, mycologist, andzoologist ..............................?
In the Public sector; among waste managers, Extension agents, Environmental engineers, and Energy Policy makers,........................................?
In the private Sector; among corporate farms, fossil fuel producers, fossil fuel power generators, small farmers, and the few charcoal makers left.........................?
3. Does Mr. Mann know of any updated estimates of the total mass of soil flora and fauna?
This is the only one I have found , from 1998, only covering bacteria and is inclusive of marine sediments:
First-ever estimate of total bacteria on earth
ET 9/98: First-ever estimate of total bacteria on earth
SUGGESTIONS:
In E. O. Wilson's "The Future of Life" he opens the book with a letter to Thoreau updating him on our current understanding of the nature of the ecology of the soils at Walden Pond.
xvi / Prologue
" These arthropods are the giants of the microcosm (if you will allow me to continue what has turned into a short lecture). Creatures their size are present in dozens-hundreds, if an ant or termite colony is presents. But these are comparatively trivial numbers. If you focus down by a power of ten in size, enough to pick out animals barely visible to the naked eye, the numbers jump to thousands. Nematode and enchytraied pot worms, mites, springtails, pauropods, diplurans, symphylans, and tardigrades seethe in the underground. Scattered out on a white ground cloth, each crawling speck becomes a full-blown animal. Together they are far more striking and divers in appearance than snakes, mice, sparrows, and all the other vertebrates hereabouts combined. Their home is a labyrinth of miniature caves and walls of rotting vegetable debris cross-strung with ten yards of fungal threads. And they are just the surface of the fauna and flora at our feet. Keep going, keep magnifying until the eye penetrates microscopic water films on grains of sand, and there you will find ten billion bacteria in a thimbleful of soil and frass. You will have reached the energy base of the decomposer world as we understand it 150 years after you sojourn in Walden Woods."
This microcosm needs to be shown to the public. I suggest that Mr. Mann use his influence to convince an ecologically-minded Hollywood mogul to produce a DVD to add to his book jacket. A computer-generated film highlighting this dynamic ecology like those done of the flora and fauna of the Jurassic and Ice Age periods that you may have seen on the Science channels.
Here is an example that gives a great perspective on the scale of things, although not a video, but you get my point :
Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Secret Worlds: The Universe Within - Interactive Java Tutorial
GOOD LUCK with the interview!!
Erich
