Dr. Makarieva, list etal
Thanks for the added response. A few inserts below.
On Jul 6, 2015, at 8:45 AM, Anastassia Makarieva <ammakari...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Ron (ccd all previous discussion participants)
>
> Thank you for your questions. Please allow me a few words about my background
> which will put my further answers to your questions in a perspective. The
> concept of the biotic regulation of the environment, which Victor Gorshkov
> and I have been advancing, aims to formulate a coherent, inter-disciplinary
> quantitative picture of the physical, biological and ecological mechanisms
> that allow life to persist. Life is viewed as a realization of a complex,
> genetically encoded algorithm that creates and maintains conditions necessary
> for its own perpetuation (this is brief, but see two books here).
[RWL1: To help other readers, “here” refers to
http://www.bioticregulation.ru/
This book, which surprisingly was non-fee, has a nice chapter on the future of
biomass at: http://bioticregulation.ru/pubs/book00/chapter12a.pdf, This
suggested section 6.5, available by changing “12a” to “6a”, and is worth
reading.
The book looks outstanding for this “biotic regulation” topic, but I
have only skimmed so far. I have not looked at the second (older) text in
English.
Using “1a” instead of “6a” leads to the following conclusion of the
introductory chapter - which accords well with my own views and with most
messages on this list (where the next “above” refers to the book’s
introduction):
> “On the above basis, the following conclusions can be made:
> - Like social animals, people form large, internally-correlated associations
> (countries) and maintain their level of organisation via competitive
> interaction of countries.
> - Competitive capacity of a country is tightly coupled to the population
> number of its citizens. As a result, the more rapidly-growing nations
> gradually acquire advantage in the world’s political arena.
> - Although human population growth presents the most serious threat to the
> global environmental stability, it is at present disadvantageous to most
> countries to impose limits on population growth of its citizens.
> - While such a situation persists, humanity is rapidly moving towards a
> global ecological catastrophe.
> - Competitive interaction of countries cannot be done away with, as far as
> sociality is a genetically-programmed property of humans.
> - The way out is to be sought in uncoupling the competitive capacity of
> countries from the population number of its citizens by means of finding new
> forms of competitive interaction between countries and elaboration of new
> norms of international law. To decide how to do it should become the most
> urgent task of the modern world community.”
I believe the word “catastrophe” may refer more to the biosphere than
the atmosphere - but I have to go back. Re the last point, The recent
recommendation by Prof. Wm Nordhaus of an all-country ”Club” featuring a carbon
tax with tariff possibly fits the last of these six conclusions - as a new
desirable international law “norm”. The “Club” idea might work for water
management as well, but CO2 is a more universal topic.
> Earlier in my career (in late 1990s) I did research on the role of the
> biosphere in the global carbon cycle, having joined Victor who by then had
> been investigating this topic for over a decade (see the carbon section on
> our website).
[RWL2: http://www.bioticregulation.ru/tag.php?t=carbon
This site is similar to the above, but also leads to several recent
power points, that I have also not yet absorbed. This is a large site, with
Dr. Nobre’s new report also prominent.
> Tackling the missing sink problem we predicted from general principles that
> the undisturbed biota (e.g., primary forests) should react to the
> accumulating anthropogenic atmospheric carbon, considering it as a
> disturbance, and arrange a compensating sink storing carbon. At that time
> people could not quite believe that was possible -- it was thought that
> biological productivity cannot be enhanced without an enhanced nitrogen input
> ("limited by nitrogen"). "
[RWL3: I have to say I also can “ not quite believe” that natural
forests can handle all the “anthropogenic atmospheric carbon” (i.e mostly
fossil fuels). I look forward to reading more on this.
>
> However, we argued that such a mechanistic approach -- conceptually stemming
> from investigations of disturbed systems (mostly agriculture) -- cannot be
> applied to natural ecosystems. Here the complexity of biochemical reactions
> is such that via tuning interactions between the numerous species
> synthesizing and decomposing organic carbon the ecosystem should be able to
> arrange a compensatory response to environmental perturbations of different
> nature and scale (not just excessive atmospheric carbon). We argue that
> without such built-in mechanisms of environmental regulation, natural
> ecosystems would not have been able to exist for the millions of years that
> they did. Having reacted to numerous internal perturbations in the past,
> natural ecosystems must have reacted to the anthropogenic carbon as well. In
> late 2000s it was indeed found that primary tropical forests ensure a
> significant carbon sink (see, e.g., an insightful presentation by Dr. Stephen
> Pacala “New constraints on carbon mitigation" (2010), the sink is discussed
> around 29:00).
[RWL4: This talk by Dr. Pacala
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe3N-sp4BAk&feature=plcp&context=C3341e8aUDOEgsToPDskIVvejf3AXflWvAOHSzHV87
)
was excellent and new to me. However, I heard nothing related to the potential
of carbon negativity, nor your (below) conclusion that natural forest can
handle the recent, rapid 40% increase in atmospheric carbon (and heading to a
doubling).
Aside: Unfortunately, I got caught up in the next video - a 1 3/4
hour talk by Dr. Nate Lewis (a fantastic chemist) on energy storage - in his
case starting with hydrogen, describing (also in 2010) work that in part is
based on duplicating photosynthesis but with higher efficiency. Like Dr.
Pacala’s talk, no mention of needing also to achieve carbon negativity - part
of this list’s interests. I gather from a bit more Googling that Dr. Lewis’
2015-based goal is still some distance off. From some of the cost estimates
and technical hurdles there, I think traditional biofuels are safe as anergy
storage mechanisms for some years. I wish that a similar large scale ($75
million/yr?) effort was also going into artificial charcoal or other forms of
carbon negativity.
>
> More recently, realization of this complexity (which we have been always
> emphasizing) has been widening regarding the fate of carbon in soil (see,
> e.g., "Persistence of soil organic matter as an ecosystem property" by
> Schmidt et al. 2011 ).
[RWL5: This (behind paywall) is at
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7367/full/nature10386.html .
Also free at:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/pictures/publ/Nature%20478,%2049-56,%202011%20Schmidt.pdf
Only slightly directed at biochar, about which their final biochar
sentence (and I agree with all parts) is:
"Biochar is likely to be a useful part of sequestration-mitigation
strategies, but more understanding of the variation in its decay rates is
needed before we can develop simple (that is, policy-relevant) quantitative
relationships between biochar additions and expected sequestration”
You apparently take this Schmidt paper to be more negative about
biochar than do I. It is not surprising that we are still learning about a
topic whose name was only adopted 8 years ago.
> Those substances that appear very stable in laboratory can be rapidly
> decomposed by the natural soil community. Not the chemical composition of a
> particular substance, but the ecological status of the community defines how
> much carbon will be stored. The knowledge of these processes is exceptionally
> limited and, as we estimate, it is not plausible to expect that we will once
> master it given the unprecedented complexity of living systems.
[RWL6: The biochar community is not as concerned with recalcitrance
as with increasing out-year NPP and profitability. Biochar is by far the
longest lived carbonaceous material in soil - as seen in terra preta soils and
by its use to date artifacts (in many, not all, soils) over many thousands
years old. So I have to disagree with your term “not plausible” - if you mean
to say it is not ready to see large scale field testing (which is already
happening). A century lifetime will satisfy most users - and carbon-negative
payments can be based on actual, not predicted, lifetime performance. It is
not much different from making REDD payments or payments for reforestation.
>
> Importantly, if we view natural ecosystems as complex mechanisms regulating
> regional and global climatic conditions, then the danger of the human impact
> is not just atmospheric pollution by CO2, but first and foremost the
> destruction of those natural systems that have been keeping the planet
> habitable. Imagine the same 9 GtC/year emitted to the atmosphere of an Earth
> where the forests and ocean are intact (in properly defined pre-industrial
> state). It may well happen that we would not have seen any global warming, as
> it is physically possible to offset the CO2 impact by the effects of cloud
> cover, which is profoundly impacted or better to say controlled by ecological
> processes. On the other hand, if a “correct" natural ecosystem (i.e. the one
> that has been doing that for millions of years) is able to impose a
> stabilizing impact on climate, then an artificial biological system with the
> same productivity (power) but lacking the necessary genetic information can
> destabilize the climate at a comparable rate.
[RWL7: I can’t agree that the fossil 9 Gt C/yr is less important than
our (horrible) “destruction of those natural systems” nor that “.. we would
not have seen any global warming." I also can’t agree that biochar fits this
last phrase “artificial biological system” warning nor that the 9 Gt C/yr of
fossil input is beyond the capability of the existing “natural ecosystem” to
handle the job. I also know of no model that suggests your “would not have
seen” position to be plausible, and so hope you can cite any such model. In
any case we have harmed that natural system, so I still believe biochar has the
potential to “quickly” (i.e. > 5 GtC/yr) get us back to 350 ppm, if
(globally) we take on that task.
>
> Let us consider the biochar idea in this context. With a global NPP of 100
> GtC/year and global emissions of less than one tenth of that, in mechanistic
> terms it seems a feasable approach to divert a certain part of global
> productivity to produce inert organic carbon to be stored somewhere. But
> where to produce the biochar? You cannot harvest this carbon from natural
> ecosystems -- there it is essential for the functioning of the ecosystem
> itself. E.g. when you remove dead trees from a natural forest you deprive
> heterotrophs of their food. In a chain of events that we are unable to
> comprehend this can impact soil composition and feedback on tree functioning
> which will produce less (or more) condensation nuclei, generate less (or
> more) clouds and possibly enhance greenhouse effect — this is precisely the
> opposite outcome compared to our goal of climate change mitigation.
[RWL8: Roughly half the earth (7+ gigahectares) is now in pasture and
arid lands. The pastures (often previously forested) is used for cattle, most
likely adding more enteric methane than can be offset by soil improvement. I
don’t consider it impossible to increase your stated 100 Gt C/r by 5 or even
10%. My biochar friends say the best economics is working with presently
unproductive land. Applying the charcoal only near the roots of seedlings can
help biochar go a long way. Your last sentence relates to my questions in the
last message - so I await those answers. It is hard for me to believe that
properly applied biochar will ever lead to fewer condensation nuclei. See
www.biochar-international.org for thousands of biochar technical papers.
>
> Furthermore, continuously manipulated forests at a certain point become
> fragile and unstable and cannot ensure any carbon sink -- becoming instead a
> source as they degrade (and the water regime degrades as well, by the way).
> For example, as also mentioned in the above report by Prof. Pacala, North
> American forests that have been under industrial management for many decades
> (including the artificial fire maintenance, dead tree removal, selective
> cutting etc.), now suffer very significantly from pests like bark beetles --
> in comparison, Russian forests left to recover on their own via natural
> processes, remain (relatively) safe -- note that the climate change impacts
> Russian and Canadian forests similarly.
[RWL9: I agree that many forest systems have been handled badly. There
are also some commercial forests that have been progressively more productive.
So, I feel you are giving too little credit to what can be done by skilled
foresters. All land cannot possibly be left to go wild - especially in the
short time we have to do something about getting back to 350 (or less) ppm CO2.
The only rationale I have seen for the huge beetle kill in my own state of
Colorado is a lack of sufficient cold-enough winter days (caused by CO2).
Southern Canada is already experiencing beetle kill; presumable Russia will
follow soon.
>
> Generally, with natural forests we cannot improve their climate regulation
> abilities — we just do not know how they function.
[RWL10: Perhaps, but there is considerable growing evidence that
biochar improves soil functioning and health - although I agree we cannot yet
predict when, where and how much. No reasonable farmer or forester is going to
apply biochar on a late scale without testing; testing for a given char, soil,
and plant species competition is cheap and easy. The experience with terra
preta soils of a large (4-5x?) increase in biochar-blessed land values near
Manaus Brazil says a lot about climate regulation; there is zero conflict
between biochar’s climate and soil improvement properties.
>
> Another option would be to make a plantation of some species and produce
> biochar there. However, a plantation is, so to speak, "the wrong" biota and
> again it can make a destabilising climate impact (e.g. by doing "wrong"
> things with the clouds). From our perspective, if we have a free territory we
> would do much better for the climate if we try to recover native forest on
> this territory (which is a very complex task by itself) and then leave it as
> it is to regulate climate to our benefit. From this angle, a “dead" territory
> (desert) that, with its zero productivity, "does nothing", could be better
> for the climate than a highly productive plantation that energetically "does
> the wrong things".
[RWL11: Biochar proponents rarely use the loaded word “plantations”.
Much more apt to talk about adding a second income stream beyond “food”. I am
disappointed that we are apparently not going to agree on anything related to
biochar. I think you are not appreciating how badly we need to get back to 350
ppm CO2 and giving too little credit to science. Converting pasture land back
to a forest managed for combined energy and biochar outputs seems to me to be a
much better option than letting that same land return somehow to an ill-defined
“natural” state.
>
> Moreover, from our perspective, even if by some miracle we returned to 350
> ppm right now and stopped emissions, this would not guarantee us a stable
> climate that is cooler than now, provided that we continue to destroy natural
> ecosystems. There are many internal positive physical feedbacks within the
> climate system that can lead to instability if the global biotic regulation
> is switched off or severely impaired.
[RWL12: Of course we must not “destroy natural ecosystems”. Re the
second sentence, the issue is whether biochar can better (more rapidly, with
more economy) “switch on” your desired precipitation-based “global biotic
regulation”. I am greatly surprised that you are so sure biochar can’t help
what you (and I) desire.
>
> In summary, we are convinced that there are no conceptually simple solutions
> to the climate problem, despite the biochar may look as such. We believe that
> to save the climate the highest priority at the moment is to urgently
> preserve the existing self-sustainable ecosystems (not just intact, but all
> of them still capable of self-recovery) and initiate global efforts on smart
> ecosystem restoration. In our view, leaving what is left to degrade further
> poses a more significant threat to climate stability than the on-going
> industrial carbon emissions.
[RWL13: I am in no way suggesting that biochar is a “conceptually
simple solution”. I am suggesting that the evidence especially from the terra
preta soils and modern results on soil health and improved productivity both
support putting research dollars into studies of the “biotic regulation” type
you are calling for. I am surprised that you have offered only negative
impressions with zero proof. Only one of your above cites mentions biochar -
and that (cited above) is positive - with co-authorship by one of biochar’s
strongest supporters: Professor Johannes Lehmann.
>
> Sorry for this long essay. I believe I have tangentially addressed some of
> your questions, but in my next letter I will try to address them one by one.
> Thank you again and best wishes,
> Anastassia
[RWL14: I hope that my above responses will encourage you to look
further into what is happening in biochar research around the world (with a
doubling time near a year for most progress measures: publications, sales,
investments, number of firms, support groups, etc). I fear you are not aware
of how rapidly the biochar field is progressing. I look forward to your
answers to my more detailed questions repeated below (and I have truncated the
rest of the thread, which was getting much too long). Your position on biochar
so far seems at odds with your intent to bring more rain to interior Brazil -
which still seems quite possible/plausible.
With apologies for this final question (based on reading no urgency on
your part about getting back ASAP below 350 ppm of CO2):
Can you explain how your above negative position on bio-based carbon
removal relates (or not) to the often-stated concern that high-latitude
countries believe they could benefit from a warmer climate?
Ron
Repeating yesterday’s detailed biochar questions:
> 4a. Overall: Can/should reforestation lead to more biochar (harvest
> earlier, use of more coppicing and pollarding, emphasizing flows as well as
> stocks, etc).
>
> 4b. One reason to favor biochar is the presumed/claimed increase in
> NPP (Terra preta soils giving double or more NPP today (500+ years after
> placement) in the Amazon). Should biochar-amended soils then have roughly
> double annual evaporation per unit area as well?
>
> 4c. More biochar should also give better rainfall retention (less
> runoff). Should this lead to more (and more even) annual evaporation (and
> therefore more beneficial inland rainfall)?
>
> 4d. Apparently forest roughness is beneficial. Harvesting for biochar
> could presumably be organized to emphasize greater roughness. Can you give
> any more guidance on roughness preferences?
>
> 4e. Generally speaking, biochar feedstock is not hugely critical,
> aside from wanting large annual NPP. Probably species could be added or
> favored that have maximum particulate release. Can you give any cite to
> trees that appear best or worse in this regard? We hear of preferences for
> micnthus and (very tall perennial) grasses. Might any also be good
> particulate emitters?
>
> 4f. . There is considerable concern that biomass sequestration via
> reforestation is vulnerable to forest fires. Forests created for biochar
> (carbon negativity - and carbon neutrality both) should be less vulnerable,
> since dead material would be regularly harvested, and fire breaks could be
> maintained. Pyrolysis with gas utilization seems to be cleaner (less soot)
> than combustion. Also, since employment for biochar (and energy
> availability) would be considerably greater than for reforestation, there
> should be better forest protection by locals. There is no requirement I know
> of for monoculture plantations. Have you (anyone) heard of anything related
> to biochar sources or production that would seem to be in the wrong direction?
>
> 4g. Are there places in the world where we might want reduced
> rainfall - and so avoid biochar there?
>
> 4h. The SRM side of this list would presumably want to better
> understand any changes in albedo that you have been able to work on -
> especially cloud brightening, but possibly there are some higher altitude
> solar radiation aspects as well. There is tremendous uncertainty on even the
> sign of the impact of clouds in climate modeling. Can your work so far
> address any of the uncertainties related to the many different kinds and
> heights of clouds - on both long and short wavelength radiation?
>
> 4i. You have stated that ocean evaporation is much smaller than that
> over land. However, some on this list are interested in fostering ocean
> biomass (more than the biochar community). The Sargasso sea for instance may
> have species that emit similarly to trees. Mangroves are fast growing and
> need reforestation many places. Should these shoreline biomass species be
> favored at all?
>
> 4j. I have visited a few island and coastal sites that have a regular
> cloud (and I think regular predictable rainfall). Might there have been any
> that can relate to either the removal of forests - or reforestation? I am
> trying to think through luture low cost experiments - as island
> countries/communities are those most supportive of CDR; I understand that
> your theory is normally working over 100’s of kilometers.
>
> 5. Again thanks for your helpful responses as we come up to speed.
> All the above is to ask for anything further you might want to add about
> bringing the geoengineering world closer to what you have been working on.
>
>
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