Regarding the abstracts provided in the announcement for the conference in Finland, on page 10 of your link: http://www.njf.nu/filebank/files/20130405$191103$fil$QsY7Gv05Ha3cMV4m3EY o.pdf "S1-2 Soil nutrient enrichment in a half century old "Terra Preta" in Sweden" discusses the results from biochar additions totaling 1000 t/ha after 50 years; a good window into what might be expected for use by the ag sector (at high latitudes?).
Bruce From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ronal W. Larson Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 9:36 PM To: Ken Caldeira Cc: RAU greg; Geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Yale blog on SRM Ken etal - see below On Jan 9, 2014, at 4:57 PM, Ken Caldeira <[email protected]> wrote: Ron, Biochar is a storage strategy that can be applied at any scale. It is possible that biochar could be part of a geoengineering system, but if someone were to set up a little biochar facility in their backyard to improve soil quality and store a little carbon while doing so, few observers would consider this to be a "geoengineering" project. [RWL1: Agreed, but the field tests are getting bigger rapidly. When should anyone (especially ETC) be saying they are too big? An authoritative report on the present status of biochar field testing is http://www.biochar-international.org/sites/default/files/IBI_Field_Studi es_Final_May_2013.pdf, which says some are on-going, with reports likely soon. Mentioned because some are likely soon (I thought already) at 100's of hectares. I believe the scale of biochar use in Japan could already be called large scale, with dozens of rice hull pyrolysis units selling biochar in large quantities. But (I hope obviously), I am mainly trying to explore how ETC and others respond to the article's one sentence (below) using the words "CBD" and "any geoengineering" Similarly, geologic CO2 storage can be part of a carbon geoengineering (i.e., CDR) system if it were hooked up to a large scale biomass energy facility, and this were replicated at global scale, but geologic CO2 storage in itself is not considered "geoengineering" under most definitions. [RWL2: I recognize that the "S" in BECS or BECCS has been used to mean both "storage" and "sequestration". I don't think it should make any difference in my main question of whether the sentence I quoted below about coupling "moratorium" with "any" includes BECS/BECCS. I think ETC would likely say yes to a moratorium on BECS - but I am interested in opinions on geologic storage as they might affect discussion of biochar, since both require the same resource. I'd also appreciate hearing more on using "storage" vs "sequestration". I would therefore advocate that biochar be considered a candidate carbon storage medium, and argue that biochar research and experiments do not in themselves constitute geoengineering research and experiments. I would argue that biochar field experiments are no more geoengineering field experiments than are, say, experiments aimed at looking at carbon stored by reforestation, etc. [RWL3: Of course I appreciate your efforts to resolve these semantic issues. Thanks for your efforts there. But I still see a difference in a) whether biochar and BECCS are geoengineering and b) how they are to be governed. I don't believe anybody benefits if biochar is removed from the list of geoengineering technologies; this is the best forum I know to compare and discuss both SRM and CDR options. So I have to respectively disagree with your last sentence (and I include reforestation - which use can/must be a major part of biochar discussions). I don't see how biochar's inclusion should depend on"research and experiments" (in your first sentence) and full-blown early implementation with financial support (my goal). But maybe that was not your intent. A little off topic, but googling to respond on "large scale", I found an interesting "Nordic Biochar Conference" coming up in about a month in Finland, that I don't think has been well publicized. Finland could be the first country to really go large scale with biochar. See http://www.njf.nu/filebank/files/20130405$191103$fil$QsY7Gv05Ha3cMV4m3EY o.pdf Again thanks for your response and apologies for disagreeing in part. Ron Best, Ken _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Ronal W. Larson <[email protected]> wrote: Greg and list: 1. I'll let others answer the "fair?" question. In general, I am pleased with what e360.yale have been doing. 2. I mostly was pleased that the word "geoengineering" was mostly (not always) preceded by "solar" in the article cited by Greg. Not pleased that the word "CDR" never once appears. 3. But in the fourth paragraph from the end, we read (emphasis added): "This led to a 2008 Convention on Biological Diversity moratorium <https://www.cbd.int/decision/cop/default.shtml?id=11659> against iron fertilization <https://www.cbd.int/decision/cop/default.shtml?id=11659> , which in 2010 was expanded to any geoengineering <http://www.cbd.int/climate/geoengineering/> ." 4. To the best of my knowledge, there is no-one anywhere paying attention to this "moratorium" re biochar. Biochar's main opponents are even saying there has not been enough testing. My question is whether ETC (which led the CBD fight) or anyone feels we should pull the biochar community into (an ETC-CBD) line? Ron On Jan 9, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Greg Rau <[email protected]> wrote: Barking mad or a necessity? Fair and balanced - you decide. Greg http://e360.yale.edu/feature/solar_geoengineering_weighing_costs_of_bloc king_the_suns_rays/2727/?goback=%2Egde_2792503_member_582706692566184345 8#%21 "... Raymond Pierrehumbert <http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/> has called the scheme "barking mad." " "...Robock argues that while modeling and indoor experiments should be pursued, outdoor field trials are problematic. "You can't see a climate response unless an experiment is so large as to actually be geoengineering," Robock says." "Keith concludes that it "makes sense to move with deliberate haste towards deployment of geoengineering," so long as early work supports the theoretical promise of the technique. Caldeira is less bullish, saying, "Climate change is not going to extinguish us as a species. Geoengineering will always be a decision, not a necessity." " -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. 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