Dear Chartarians,
For your perusal & comment;
My draft of a talk at the Miscellaneous Session of the first North American Biochar Conference at Boulder next week;
Tinker, Tailor, Newsman, Priest...
My Avocation as a BioChar Advocate
Three years ago, the threads of vocation and interests fell together for me. Doing Nanotech material research for energy conservation, I found a science forum on BioChair. My interest in alternative energy married with a career of building ornamental gardens.
I spoke with most of the principle researchers and innovators, and then down the logical tracks of contacting professionals and companies who should have an iron in this non-combustion fire: the charcoal producers, carbon traders, big and small agriculture, farm-equipment makers, waste companies, soil scientists, the USDA, the congressional committees, NRCS, environmentalist, NGOs, mycologists, palioclimatologists, media and journals of all types.
Harvesting from the group mind which developed by the network of science forums and discussion lists has been most gratifying. Two years ago, Tom Miles and Ron Larson called to draft me to co-administer the BioChar list at REPP-CREST. This collaboration of folks reaches across the world, sharing all and shouldering the implementation of all aspects of BioChar technologies. I owe them all I know. I owe them for the honor I feel in doing the most important work in my life.
The BioChar community has spread the word near and far, responsible for such hallmarks as the farm bill BioChar language, the '08 National Geographic article, engagements with Kingsford Charcoal, Clorox,and Wal-Mart, to name a few, and the endorsements of James Hansen, James Lovelock, Richard Branson, and Flanery in Australia, heavy-weights in their own fields. We need other fields to weigh in now. In politics, Turnbull has started the ball rolling focusing the Australian governmen's carbon planning to account for the soil carbon solutions and recently Tony Blair has added his voice.
Lobbying for BioChar:
My standard newsletter, which I promiscuously post to all willing to listen, includes links on important aspects of implementation, and regular updates as new work flows from field trials and bio-fuel systems development.
It is important to frame your "elevator speech" to the main interest of one's audience. Engaging evangelicals wanting to do "Creation Care", I speak first of the conservative nature of good stewardship of gods gifts.(works with Republicans too)
To waste managers it's all bottom line tipping fees and co-gen electricity.
To politicians and governmental departments, it's the "win, win, win" virtuous energy analogies of hitting three constituent birds with one stone: climate, food, and fuels.
To farmers; soil-sink banking and C02 equivalent payments, the carbon sequestration standard committee, and the soil carbon work they can do with this tool.
To journalists and writers; Shower them with facts, studies, and lists of luminaries' endorsements. Tell them that short of National Geographic, it hasn't made the front-page yet. Wee-Beasties, Carbon Condominiums, what a beautiful "connect the dots" story terra preta is, touching all disciplines and professions, the ultimate cradle to grave to cradle recycling story.
A dillar, A dollar, A Googling Scholar!
Online: other than the group mind of forums, Google Alerts, both news and blogs, have provided great leads. After the Nat. Geographic article they lit up like Christmas trees.
Then; onto Google Scholar if the lead is academic work
Google the company if
public,
If an article, comment with what they left out or got wrong.
If a foreign articles, onto Google Translator and comment the same.
Then, onto reporting to the groups and individuals and academics I know will have an interest
Of current interest:
The soil carbon bond can lead to an integration of organic and commercial agriculture practices. Biochar is a tool for both, for organic to increase its already-sustainable credentials, for chemical agriculture to at least halt soil carbon and seriously reduce carbon mining and nutrient runoff. The carbon sequestration bond can lead to a marriage of the best practices from both systems of agriculture to build soil into a biologically vital synergistic organism.
I hope to demonstrate this in my field trials with Roundup-ready corn, with the consultation of the Rodale Institute. Soil test for the full spectrum of food web organisms should ferret out the affinity of BioChar with these organisms in the context of standard chemical agricultural practices, and at Rodale with organic practice.
The royal road for BioChar's development lies with the recognition of soil carbon as a sink and not just a cycle. You're all aware of the IBI's efforts with the UN. My efforts have been focused on recruiting greater imput to the Soil Carbon Sequestration Committee. Comprised of 100 interested farming groups, agriculture companies, academics, USDA and carbon traders that have been hammering out definitions, protocols, and validation issues. Participation has allowed me to interject BioChar's utility when issues like soil GHG emissions and nutrient run-off have surfaced. I
Biofuel Watch:
just feel that if Dr. Lovelock can't get them to re-evaluate their warnings, the Congo Rainforest fund, 1500 Cameroon farms, and the respiratory health benefits won't either. It's like they are attacking smallpox vaccines because an unethical pharmacy may create an unattenuated batch. they worry about massive tree plantation development, ignoring that any large projects will by nature attract greater scrutiny of their sustainability.
To Further Research;
Moira Wilson of the University of Manchester has developed a ceramic dating technique which sounds perfect to draw an exact time line of TP development year over year.
At an accuracy of years we could see the speed at which the system built on itself once initiated.
Archaeological dating by re-firing ancient pots - physicsworld.com
This recent research on aerosols by Lina Mercado of the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, presents a double-bind, in that , as aerosols are reduced, less diffusion of light reduces photosynthesis,(drawing down 20% less CO2 into biomass). Again, only a carbon negative system like biochar can address this added CO2 burden caused by this double-bind of clean air.
Particulate pollution cuts carbon dioxide, model shows - physicsworld.com
What the CFC/Ozone success story was for raising the importance atmospheric chemistry, I feel biochar will be for carbon soil chemistry, Mycology and Microbiology. The historical climate work of William Ruddiman showing the agricultural origin of most excess CO2 begs this anthropogenic solution of soil carbon sequestration.
Carbon-Based Religion
Carl Sagan's human connection to stardust leaves out a critical stage. We are stardust, bu only stardust transformed by life. Every time I look at an SEMs of Char, it strikes me, the perfect preservation of the base structures of life, a fractal vision, how life creates the greatest surface area with the least amount of material. The preservation of this structure, for return to the lowest order of life, seems almost a religious act. A perfect cradle to cradle recycling, biotic carbon should never be combusted and destroyed, be revered, as life is revered, be returned to the cradle of terrestrial life the Soil
Reading the Japanese work on adding char in animal feed, I thought of posting the Vatican, to lobby for a re-formulation of communion wafers. Communion is what I feel when I sequester carbon in soils. This feeling lead me to compose this paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer: [Our Carbon Who Art in Heaven]
To this Carbon based religion Burning is not the consequence OF Sin , Burning is the Sin.
Religious parallels:
1) About a central figure responsible for life, carbon.
2) Stewardship; living today in a way that protects the system for posterity.
3) About something in the heavens that need to manifest on Earth
4) The Golden Rule: Account external costs so they are not done unto others.
The Terra Preta Prayer
Our Carbon who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name
By kingdom come, thy will be done, IN the Earth to make it Heaven.
It will give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our atmospheric trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against the Kyoto protocols
And lead us not into fossil fuel temptation, but deliver us from it's evil
low as we walk through the valley of the shadow of Global Warming,
I will feel no evil, your Bio-fuels and fertile microbes will comfort me,
For thine is the fungal kingdom,
and the microbe power,
and the Sequestration Glory,
For ever and ever (well at least 2000 years)
AMEN
Thanks for comments,
Erich
