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[Michaelangelica]

Myth 10: all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech

The advanced economies are obsessed with finding hi-tech solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these are expensive and may create as many problems as they solve. Nuclear power is a good example.
But it may be cheaper and more effective to look for simple solutions that reduce emissions, or even extract existing carbon dioxide from the air.
There are many viable proposals to do this cheaply around the world, which also often help feed the world's poorest people.
One outstanding example is to use a substance known as biochar to sequester carbon and increase food yields at the same time.

Biochar is an astonishing idea. Burning agricultural wastes in the absence of air leaves a charcoal composed of almost pure carbon, which can then be crushed and dug into the soil.
Biochar is extremely stable and the carbon will stay in the soil unchanged for hundreds of years.
The original agricultural wastes had captured CO2 from the air through the photosynthesis process; biochar is a low-tech way of sequestering carbon, effectively for ever. As importantly, biochar improves fertility in a wide variety of tropical soils.
Beneficial micro-organisms seem to crowd into the pores of the small pieces of crushed charcoal. A network of practical engineers around the tropical world is developing the simple stoves needed to make the charcoal.
A few million dollars of support would allow their research to benefit hundreds of millions of small farmers at the same time as extracting large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

• Chris Goodall's new book, Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, is published by Profile books, priced £9.99.

The 10 big energy myths | Environment | The Guardian

[Flying Binghi]

A few million dollars of support ....

Hmmm, yes, we have the solution - all it needs is YOUR MONEY ...we promise to repay you

[Essay]

I think the low-tech solutions also provide more jobs, in the long run; and yet they still require much the high-tech coordination, monitoring, and research that the exotic solutions require (not taking jobs away from high-tech).

I wrote to the Obama "suggestion page" advocating that he follow through on the implications of these comments:
Change.gov | momentvision

It's like, wow, ...he gets it!!!

Originally Posted by Obama

...our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

....From an interview with Joe Klein, ( Swampland - TIME.com Blog Archive The Full Obama Interview ) Obama refers to the article, explaining how Pollan's ideas fit into the concept of a new energy economy.

...so I just had to write in with something along the line of:

Originally Posted by my "suggestion"

I was heartened to read your comments about the agriculture sector's strong effect on problems that range from the economy and environment to security and health care (re: interview with Joe Klein, on the Oct. 9, 2008 open letter “Farmer in Chief” by Michael Pollan, The New York Times). I'm sure you are also aware of Dr. James Hansen's recent advocacy for the management of agricultural soils as an important climate-change mitigation strategy.
Trained as a scientist, I can only echo the wisdom, and vast potential, behind these relatively natural, carbon management ideas. The technology, education, information exchange, and employment involved with agriculture-based carbon bio-sequestration would help both the environment and the economy, to say the least.

===

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

Hmmm, yes, we have the solution - all it needs is YOUR MONEY ...we promise to repay you

FB, I'm always surprised how your short tanagential comments can motivate a reply.

OMG! A few million dollars spent on a creative idea....

...as if a few million wouldn't be spent trying to recover from the continued decline of these farmers, et al.

This is no more than would ordinarily be used for bridge loans used to carry farmers from profit through investment and back to profit again.

And yet it would solve several other problems concurrently; thus multiplying the value of the invested money many times...

Just consider it like the smallest possible economic stimulus package one could possibly think of--except it would have an ongoing, continuous reward and return on investment, on several levels.

...as opposed to so many of the huge bailouts which seem to simply allow the bailee's to continue business as usual, while they trim and reduce the value of their investment--simply putting off the bad news, and maybe staggering some of the effects, to reduce their collective impact.

Hey Farmers! No need to repay the money!
The value you create by generating new jobs, new soil and healthier crops, and reducing pollution while sequestering CO2, will be payment enough.

...and that doesn't even count the reduction in health-care costs created by avoiding a continuing exposure to a wide and ever changing variety of strong herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, and other agricultural chemicals.

Flying Binghi, do you see the opportunity to create value by synergizing solutions here?

~

[Michaelangelica]

it is good to be sceptical- but don't dismiss the idea without investigating the science.

There is bound to be scams in this, as in any other new idea/ technology

The beauty of this one is you can almost do it yourself in your own backyard

Eric just posted this to the Yahoo biochar group
Remaking that TP is hitting mainstream media now

Carbon: The Biochar Solution - TIME

[Essay]

National Geographic AND now Time!
Wow! Great news....

Carbon: The Biochar Solution - TIME

Originally Posted by Time

Biochar's ability to sequester CO2 has given new urgency to such research. "Reducing emissions isn't enough — we have to draw down the carbon stock in the atmosphere," says Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a consortium of scientists and business leaders linked to next year's United Nations Climate Summit. "And for that, slow pyrolysis biochar is a superior solution to anything else that's been proposed." Cornell's Lehmann is even more emphatic. "If biochar could be massively applied around the globe," he says, "we could end the emissions problem in one to two years."

Finally, I have a citation for this wild claim that I keep making.
~

[Eclipse Now]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

Hmmm, yes, we have the solution - all it needs is YOUR MONEY ...we promise to repay you

Still posting really informed, witty, intelligent, fact filled and accurate posts I see? Surely that last statement reveals years of following this unfolding story?

A few questions for you FB...

How many tons of agriwaste = how many tons of fuel and how many tons of biochar?
How many tons of Co2 has Tim Flannery stated biochar might permanently sequester each year?

[cooloola]

Playing around with perma-culture in my spare time I've always found that charcoal dug into the garden increases the health of the soil and delivers a better crop. This whole idea of sequestering CO2 in the soil is brilliant, on so many levels.
And it seems the idea is catching on - there's hope yet.

[Essay]

Originally Posted by cooloola

...sequestering CO2 in the soil is brilliant, on so many levels.
...there's hope yet.

This reply should probably be on the "recreating America..." thread, but I agree that this simple, singular, biochar/TP solution has the potential to help with a lot of problems ...on so many levels!
===

I can see Biochar as a huge new sector of a healthy future economy.
It can provide lots of jobs managing and processing raw resources into products.
Also....

As a focus for new value in our society, it could serve to integrate education with civic and fiscal responsibility--teaching about diet & health, biology, chemistry, physics, and earth sciences to learn about personal, social, and global sustainability.

The hours put in on actual labor (gardening, composting, biochar processes, aquaculture, etc.) should count as reductions in Health-Care Premiums--because one will be healthier with all that labor!

And those same hours should count for Social Security Contributions--because in the future, that sequestered carbon will be the thing of largest value for which you will be deservingly owed.
===

Of course this all has to be done "keeping track" of the carbon.
Which is where the high-tech comes in....

Monitoring microbial populations with gene chips...
Monitoring a sort of "weather station" for the local soil profiles...
Managing a diversity of raw resources to maximize sequestration and then energy production...
Networking to share results and learn more...
...and I'm sure there's plenty more....
===

~

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by cooloola

And it seems the idea is catching on - there's hope yet.

Yes.
There is always hope.

AND
as Terry Prattchet says ". . . a million to one chances happen every day."

It often annoyed me when talking about herbs on the media and they said to me "You mustn't give people 'False Hope' "
No such thing in my opinion.
There is only

• Hope
• No hope

There is nothing that exists in between.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Essay

This reply should probably be on the "recreating America..." thread, but I agree that this simple, singular, biochar/TP solution has the potential to help with a lot of problems ...on so many levels!
===

I can see Biochar as a huge new sector of a healthy future economy.
It can provide lots of jobs managing and processing raw resources into products.
Also....

As a focus for new value in our society, it could serve to integrate education with civic and fiscal responsibility--teaching about diet & health, biology, chemistry, physics, and earth sciences to learn about personal, social, and global sustainability.
)

Lovely Post.
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