My Center is doing a major report on putting carbon back into the soil as the means to developing two kinds of market mechanisms for farmers, nutrients and carbon. I'll keep the group informed as we prepare our materials, but just to give you a heads up, this is no silver bullet (for carbon). Biochar is better than crop detritus (no till farming), but both lose carbon due to microbial action (CO2 emissions). However, both do a terrific job creating a substrate for water. They take high clay soils and turn them into an organic sponge, holding nutrients in the ground, attached to the invested carbon.
David Schnare. On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 10:03 PM, dsw_s <[email protected]> wrote: > > Wow, that sounds very promising, although we'll have to see about the > economics. > > I hadn't heard (or hadn't absorbed) that the biochar was to come from > a pyrolysis process that makes oil and gas, so there's more > hydrocarbon and less just-plain-carbon than there would be in charcoal > from burning in open air. I don't know how stable regular charcoal is > either, although it sounds as though it's much more stable than I had > thought. I would certainly expect biochar or ordinary charcoal to > improve water retention (at least in most soils), and one of the > references in the Wikipedia biochar article says it does (without > saying for what kinds of soil, as far as I saw). > > I hope we study soil ecology before doing it on a very large scale, > though. > > On Apr 12, 5:18 am, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote: > > Biochar is highly stable in soils, and lasts centuries-millennia as Terra > > Preta. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocharhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta > > I understand it also bulks up the soil, trapping '3rd party' carbon. > > > > I am unsure whether this either affects the hydrological properties of > the > > soil, or promotes forest regrowth. If either were the case, it could > have > > the cloud-inducing effects discussed. This effect could be highly > > significant and I hope someone expert can consider it. > > > > A > > > > 2009/4/12 dsw_s <[email protected]> > > > > > > > > > But wouldn't the carbon in the biochar get returned to the atmosphere > > > fairly quickly if it were used that way? > > > > > On Apr 11, 6:24 pm, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > It would be very interesting to see if biochar has a similar effect. > If > > > > biochar could lock up carbon in soils, thicken soils, preserve and > spread > > > > forests and brighten clouds it would have benefits that could > reasonably > > > be > > > > described as 'ginormous'. > > > > I'd be interested to know if anyone in this group could explore these > > > > effects and potentially look at doing a paper or a model run on them. > > > > > > A > > > > > > 2009/4/10 dsw_s <[email protected]> > > > > > > > That sounds a lot like how I imagine geoengineering can work. A > > > > > suggestion I've made is that materials like expanded vermiculite > and > > > > > perlite (basically rock popcorn) could be used to increase water > > > > > retention in soil for both agricultural and climatic benefit. The > > > > > climate benefit includes CO2 removal by weathering, but the > > > > > distribution could also be chosen to optimize cloud patterns. > > > > > > > On Apr 9, 11:50 am, Ray Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > Hello all, > > > > > > > > I've been in consultation with a range of land-atmosphere > > > > > > and cloud meteorologists, looking at scope for increasing > > > > > > stratus and cumulo-nimbus over land in regions identified > > > > > > in GLACE (nasa). > > > > > > > > Literature review available atwww.globalcoolers.net > > > > > > > > Focus is on West Africa and rainwater harvesting, > > > > > > pilot studies plus 4 continents alliance-building. > > > > > > > > Anyone interested in collaborating? > > > > > > > > Ray Taylor > > > > > > > > ray [at] andy-taylor.org > > > > > > > -- David W. Schnare Center for Environmental Stewardship --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
