Excerpted from Climate Feedback (blog):
Solutions in the Soil
... various reports on the conference on biochar/agrichar/terra preta nova/what-you-will that just ended down in Australia. If you're not up to speed on this, the general idea is that people could help solve a great many problems by enriching soils with reduced carbon in charcoal-like form. This gets rid of the carbon for a long time (charcoal is very refractory) and improves the soil in various not yet fully understood ways. ... There's what seems to be a thriving discussion board on the subject at Hypography. And we have an article on the subject in Nature this week ...
...The conference was opened by Tim "Weather Maker" Flannery, which is a pretty big name for a new field to manage to attract, I'd have thought.
...One interesting aspect is the idea of tying this issue to the issue of crappy stoves that drive indoor air pollution and waste a lot of energy.
... calculations for carbon sequestration by photosynthesis suggest that converting all US cropland to Conservation Reserve Programs — in which farmers are paid to plant their land with native grasses — or to no-tillage would sequester 3.6% of US emissions per year during the first few decades after conversion; that is, just a third of what one of the above biochar approaches can theoretically achieve. ...
added: The author of the post is Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor at Nature. The post is mirrored at his blog on Heliophage.
Heliophage ..." is loosely associated with my book
Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet, which will be published in July 2007 by 4th Estate and HarperCollins. It tracks events associated with the book, news that might be of interest to people interested in the subject matter of the book."...
Considering how well terra preta fits into the heliophagic theme, Oliver Morton will have more to say on the subject.
