Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/biocharbriefing.pdf

Some quotes

a
proposal to use soils as a medium
for addressing climate change by
scaling up the use of biochar.
Unfortunately, like other such
schemes to engineer biological
systems, it is based on a
dangerously reductionist view of
the natural world, which fails to
recognize and accommodate
ecological complexity and variation.
PICTURE
Logs cut from Amazon rainforest to be turned into charcoal
near Ulianopolis, Brazil (www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/
forests/ amazon_destruction_speeds_up.htm)

"reductionist' is not how i would see this. For me it has opened up a whole new area of complexity and wonder. I never saw soil in the way I do now-a living dynamic interactive amazingly complex world. The NPK mantra is gone, organic is in.
The juxtaposition of of the photo of chopped amazonian trees is unfair. There are many souces of biochar feed eg from arecent post
Some Sources of waste/fuel for biochar.
Here i can speak only of my own area/county

• Council green "waste" --Locally tonnes and tonnes of green waste and wood offcuts (pallets, off cuts,building waste, flooring etc etc) are collected by the local council(small-outer suburban) on a daily basis.
• Storm waste-- A storm recently felled thousands of trees in my area. this ALL went to landfill. Much of my outer suburban area is being "developed" this usaually means taking most of the trees off the site.
• Intensive farming waste We have thousands of tonnes of chicken litter produced daily. with the recent(?) drought farmers were not using this for fertiliser.- Again into land-fill. I haven't even looked at pigs or cattle.
• Paper Mill waste- wile this is uneconomic as an energy producer, (as it is about 70% water) pyrolising it is preferable to methane producing land-fill --as happens now
• Wood-chips-- we cut down thousands of acres of forest, chip them and freight them to Japan for them to make origami (or char?)
• Sewerage waste.-- God knows what happens to this. Soon we will have to start harvesting all the water from it. Pyrolysis can do this with some tweaking. Heavy metals? Why? What industry is putting its waste in the sewer?
• Algae specially grown
• Seaweed- near me a lake is chocked with sea grass. I gather the same thing happens near lakes with urban, nutrient-rich run-off
• Plantations Char -After you have charred all the waste, then start growing trees for charcoal (something that has been done and is being done in UK--on a sustainable basis for thousands of years)
  or
  stop making wood-chips out of them. Charcoal is far more valuable to society. What ever happened to the "paperless office"?

‘Biochar’ advocates,
on the other hand, promote stripping
the land of ‘agricultural and forestry
residues’, which would greatly reduce
humus.

A perversion and corruption and twisting of the idea. Why? what special interest of yours does biochar threaten?

In fact much of the industry and research focus is on producing fertilizer made from a
combination of charcoal and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer Eprida claim that this could allow coal power plants “to reach target [CO2] reductions without reducing plant efficiencies”.5 This “enriched” biochar is then used as
a slow-release fertilizer. An innovative means for using biomass to create fertilizer, perhaps, but the underlying result is a so-called carbon capture and sequestration technology which will
perpetuate the use of coal and dangerously places absolute faith in the retention of carbon in
soils.

"Much" research? WPDYLO?

ACCS strategy that works! No celebration or jumping though hoops, popping champaigne corks This CCS solution "perpetuate the use of coal" and "dangerously places absolute faith in the retention of carbon"

There is no question that the carbon in biochar will eventually end up back in the atmosphere at some point in the future

.
Very true, but a little ingenuous and misleading perhaps?

‘Biochar’, like other bio-
sequestration technologies does nothing to stem the flow of fossil carbon into the biosphere.

No, that is the definition/meaning of "sequestration"?
In fact by reducing fertiliser use and run-off, improving soil productivity & eventually water holding capacity it does have a negative carbon effect.

A recent field study near Manaus, Brazil (one of the few published in
peer reviewed journals) found that charcoal mixed with synthetic fertilizer enhanced yields more than synthetic fertilizer alone, but the highest reported yields were obtained using solely chicken manure instead. Charcoal alone, actually suppressed plant growth completely after two harvests!3

.
The reference given "3" is for this article:-

Long term effects of manure, charcoal and mineral fertilization on crop production and fertility on a highly weathered Central Amazonian upland soil
Journal Plant and Soil
Publisher Springer Netherlands
ISSN 0032-079X (Print) 1573-5036 (Online)
Issue Volume 291, Numbers 1-2 / February, 2007
Category Original Paper
DOI 10.1007/s11104-007-9193-9
Pages 275-290
Subject Collection Biomedical and Life Sciences
SpringerLink Date Friday, February 02, 2007

PDF (494.3 KB)HTMLFree Preview
Christoph Steiner1 , Wenceslau G. Teixeira2, Johannes Lehmann3, Thomas Nehls1, Jeferson Luis Vasconcelos de Macêdo2, Winfried E. H. Blum4 and Wolfgang Zech1

(1) Institute of Soil Science and Soil Geography, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany
(2) Embrapa Amazonia Ocidental, CP 319, Manaus, AM, 69011-970, Brazil
(3) Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
(4) Institute of Soil Research, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), 1180 Vienna, Austria
Received: 16 September 2006 Accepted: 2 January 2007 Published online: 2 February 2007

Abstract Application of organic fertilizers and charcoal increase nutrient stocks in the rooting zone of crops, reduce nutrient leaching and thus improve crop production on acid and highly weathered tropical soils.
In a field trial near Manaus (Brazil) 15 different amendment combinations based on equal amounts of carbon (C) applied through chicken manure (CM), compost, charcoal, and forest litter were tested during four cropping cycles with rice (Oryza sativa L.) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) in five replicates.

CM amendments resulted in the highest (P < 0.05) cumulative crop yield (12.4 Mg ha−1) over four seasons.
Most importantly, surface soil pH, phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg) were significantly enhanced by CM.

A single compost application produced fourfold more grain yield (P < 0.05) than plots mineral fertilized in split applications.

Charcoal significantly improved plant growth and doubled grain production if fertilized with NPK in comparison to the NPK-fertilizer without charcoal (P < 0.05). The higher yields caused a significantly greater nutrient export in charcoal-amended fields, but available nutrients did not decrease to the same extent as on just mineral fertilized plots.
Exchangeable soil aluminum (Al) was further reduced if mineral fertilizer was applied with charcoal (from 4.7 to 0 mg kg−1).
The resilience of soil organic matter (SOM) in charcoal amended plots (8 and 4% soil C loss, mineral fertilized or not fertilized, respectively) indicates the refractory nature of charcoal in comparison to SOM losses over 20 months in CM (27%), compost amended (27%), and control plots (25% loss).

Keywords Black carbon - Brazil - Organic agriculture - Oxisol - Terra Preta de Indio

I don't have access to the full article, however the article abstract seems to praise charcoal not bury it (pardon the pun).