To Keith and group, Responding at bottom to these points of yours about irrigation, droughts and biochar,
On Monday, February 10, 2014 8:11:39 AM UTC-5, Keith Henson wrote: > > [snip] > Let's think about droughts. > > Reducing the effect of rainfall on food production is an old idea. > It's called irrigation. But to make irrigation long term independent > from climate takes lots of capital and prodigious amounts of energy, > to desalinate sea water and pump it thousands of miles inland. > > Or to take a Mississippi flood, clean out the silt and pump it into > the Ogallala Aquifer or over to the Colorado River (or both). > > A really rich society could do that, especially one with oceans of > very low cost energy. > > Should we put some numbers on what it would take? > > Keith > > PS BIo char from any source is darn good idea, even if we didn't need > to remove carbon. > [snip] [Brian:] I think deployment of biochar allows us to *reduce* irrigation, because its structure allows buffering and storage of moisture in the soil. That gives security against both drought and flooding. It also supports the microbial life in the soil which has been depleted in decades of excessive chemical inputs, thus restoring another major carbon sink. These are low-impact technologies, and far cheaper in money and side-effects than desalination, irrigation, and energy production. Production of biochar also is a renewable energy source displacing fossil carbon with carbon already in the biosphere. Brian -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
