Earthen Terra Preta Kilns and Pollen Spectrum

I am reposting this article by David Bennet with Lehmann on Terra Preta in 2005. This reconfirms the most critical information as well as describes the original scope of the Amazonian Indian civilization itself.

Again this lays out the limiting factors and fully supports my earthen kiln conjecture.

Firstly, the maize or corn exists in an environment that mitigated against its use for purely food production. There were alternatives far better suited to the non terra preta environment, starting immediately with manioc which is a rainforest friendly plant.

Secondly, the only viable source of meat protein to these peoples at this population density was fish. Without confirmation, a pond with tilapia makes great sense. The waste from the daily meal could be readily folded into any growing seed hill. Human waste could simply have been buried in the field itself avoiding any storage. This is common practice to this day.

The making of the earthen kiln is no more difficult than uprooting the dehydrated corn stalks and properly stacking them to form an earthen walled kiln with a wall thickness of two to three root pads and an interior of tightly packed corn stalks. Obviously, any other plant material, including wood can be built into the stack as available. The earthen wall nicely restricts air flow during the burn phase and lends itself to optimization by changing the thickness. It also minimizes the amount of human effort needed which is through the roof if you are attempting to cover a pile of stubble or branches.

This gives you a kiln with vertical earthen walls and a possibly domed top that can be easily covered with earth. Again, field trials will optimize this protocol very easily. The kiln could be squared of or perhaps even circular though unlikely. The only tool to this point is a strong back or two. We have gathered several tons of corn stover over perhaps an acre of land with only a little more effort than that required to clear the field and burn the waste.

Now we must fire the kiln. The easy way is to take a clay lined old basket and fill it up with coals from a wood fire. Carry this ember charge to the center of the kiln top and tip the charge onto the exposed center and place the basket as a cap to the newly forming chimney. More clay may be necessary to widen the chimney cap. Throw more earth on top of this to prevent breakout of the fire. Keep growing earth on any breakout points that start. The chimney will serve to burn all the volatiles produced as the hot zone expands to fill the collapsing kiln until they are exhausted. Thereupon the hot zone will cool off leaving a blend of biochar, ash and earth and some root ends for the next kiln. And yes, we should have a lot of fired clay.

The biochar itself will be a range of nonvolatile combustion products that will range from even dried vegetation to activated charcoal following a nice bell curve. The material can be then gathered in baskets and redistributed into the field onto the seed hills again reducing wastage and effort.

I realized originally that the only ancient plant that could accommodate a high enough volume of terra preta production was good old maize. It just seemed an unlikely option for tropical rainforests. That is when I started looking for references to the pollen record. The article by David Bennett and Lehmann is one of those reverences that then emerged.

I would like to get a full spectrum of the pollen profile since it seems very likely that while the fence rows held the food trees, it seems more likely that they also used a variation of the three sisters using some form of convenient legume. Squashes also, of course, but not nearly as important.

The key point of all this is that a family can convert a field into terra preta in one short season, allowing them to repeat the process thereafter as necessary until the field is completely transformed to depth. Today, we can do the same thing using shovels and a garbage can lid.

Terra preta: unearthing an agricultural goldmine

Nov 14, 2005 10:36 AM, By David Bennett

Many soil scientists insist an ancient Amerindian agrarian society will soon make a huge impact on the modern world. They say once the intricacies and formulation of the society’s “terra preta” (dark earth) is unlocked, the benefits will help stop environmental degradation and bring fertility to depleted soils. Developing and developed nations will benefit.

Orellana

The story goes that in 1542, while exploring the Amazon Basin near Ecuador in search of El Dorado, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana began checking the area around one of the Amazon’s largest rivers, the Rio Negro. While he never found the legendary City of Gold, upon his return to Spain, Orellana reported the jungle area held an ancient civilization — a farming people, many villages and even massive, walled cities.

Later explorers and missionaries were unable to confirm Orellana’s reports. They said the cities weren’t there and only hunter-gatherer tribes roamed the jungles. Orellana’s claims were dismissed as myth.

Scientists who later considered Orellana’s claims agreed with the negative assessments. The key problem, they said, was large societies need much food, something Amazonia’s poor soils are simply incapable of producing. And without agriculture, large groups of people are unable to escape a nomadic existence, much less build cities.

Dark earth

More recently, though, Orellana’s supposed myths have evolved into distinct possibilities. The key part of the puzzle has to do with terra preta.

It turns out that vast patches of the mysterious, richly fertile, man-made soil can be found throughout Amazonia. Through plot work, researchers claim terra preta can increase yields 350 percent over adjacent, nutrient-leached soils.

Many well-respected researchers now say terra preta, most of it still hidden under jungle canopy, could have sustained large, agronomic societies throughout Brazil and neighboring countries.

Amazing properties

The properties of terra preta are amazing. Even thousands of years after creation, the soil remains fertile without need for any added fertilizer. For those living in Amazonia, terra preta is increasingly sought out as a commodity. Truckloads of the dark earth are often carted off and sold like potting soil.

Chock-full of charcoal, the soil is often several meters deep. It holds nutrients extremely well and seems to contain a microbial mix especially suited to agriculture.

Thus far, despite great effort, scientists have been unable to duplicate production of the soil. If researchers can ever uncover the Amerindians’ terra preta cocktail recipe, it will help stop the environmentally devastating practice of slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon jungle. Terra preta’s benefits will also be exported across the globe.

However, even without unlocking all of the soil’s secrets, things learned in the study of it are already being brought to row-crop fields.

Among researchers studying terra preta is Johannes Lehmann, a soil fertility management expert and soil biogeochemistry professor at Cornell University. Lehmann, who recently spoke with Delta Farm Press, says things learned from terra preta will help farmers with agricultural run-off, sustained fertility and input costs. Among his comments:

On how Lehmann came to terra preta research…

“I spent three years living and working in degraded Amazonia field sites. Inevitably, if you work in the central Amazon, you come across terra preta.

“The visual impact of these soils is amazing. Usually, the soils there are yellow-whitish colored with very little humus. But the terra preta is often 1 or 2 meters deep with rich, dark color. It’s unmistakable. We know terra preta are preferentially cropped.”

On the various properties of terra preta and its modes of action…

“There are a few factors that contribute to this fertility — sustainable fertility. Remember, these are soils that were created 1,000 to 5,000 years ago and were abandoned hundreds or thousands of years ago. Yet, over all those hundreds of years, the soils retain their high fertility in an environment with high decomposition, humidity and temperatures. In this environment, according to text books, this soil shouldn’t exist.

“That alone is fascinating for us.

“Among the most important properties are high nutrient concentrations (especially for calcium and phosphorus). Most likely, this is linked to a unique utilization of agricultural and fishery waste products.

“We believe that fish residues are an important portion of the high phosphorus concentrations. Phosphorus is really the number one limiting nutrient in the central Amazon.

“Another interesting aspect of terra preta’s high fertility is the char (charcoal) content of the soil. This was deliberately put into the soil by the Indians and doesn’t only create a higher organic matter — and therefore higher fertility through better nutrient-retention capacity — but this special type of carbon is more efficient in creating these properties.

“You can have the same amount of carbon in terra preta and adjacent soils and the infertile soil won’t change. Terra preta’s abilities don’t just rely on more carbon, but the fact that its char and humus is somehow more efficient in creating beneficial properties. That’s the truly unique aspect.”

Having lived in the Amazon and studied it, how much terra preta does Lehmann believe there is?

“There are no precise numbers of how much terra preta there is (in Amazonia). No one has done any large-scale investigation of that. It’s very difficult to find out in the Amazon’s jungle environment. Suitable remote-sensing techniques haven’t yet been used.

“So (the 10 percent) estimates sometimes cited are crude extrapolations from the few areas we’re familiar with. But we know that in familiar areas there are huge patches of terra preta. These are hundreds of hectares large. When there have been maps produced of areas containing terra preta — say an area around a stream — patches are everywhere.

“It is also true that terra preta is widespread. Almost anywhere in the central Amazon, you can step out of the car and ask a local ‘Is there any terra preta around?’ and they’ll show you. It’s everywhere.”

What were the Indians growing? Tree crops? Row crops?

“There has been some pollen analysis. It suggests manioc and maize were being grown 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. In the pollen bank, these crops didn’t pop up sporadically but in large numbers.

“But all kinds of crops were grown by the Indians. Palm trees, under-story fruit trees, Brazil nut trees — all were very important.”

On the differences between slash-and-burn and slash-and-char agriculture…

“We have very good indications that the Amerindian populations couldn’t have practiced slash-and-burn and created these soils.

“It’s also highly unlikely that a population relying on stone axes would have practiced slash-and-burn anyway. The normal soils are so poor that with a single slash-and-burn event, you can only crop without fertilizer for two years at most. Then the soil has to be left fallow again.

“Primary forest trees have a diameter of 2 or 3 meters. If all you had was a stone ax in your hand, you’d find a different way to deal with agriculture than felling these huge trees every two years.

“The difference between (the two systems) is the slash-and-char wouldn’t burn in an open fire. Charcoal would be produced under partial exclusion of oxygen. We envision that happening by natives covering up piled up logs with dirt and straw. These charcoal-making systems are still being used around the world.”

How close are researchers to duplicating terra preta?

“We’re working intensively. We don’t need to take any terra preta anywhere. What we want to do is become knowledgeable about how terra preta was created and then create it elsewhere with local resources.

“Research on this is ongoing in Columbia, in Kenya. I have research colleagues in Japan and Indonesia also working on this. At the moment, there is a lot of excitement but there’s a lot of work to do.”

How terra preta could help industrialized countries…

“We envision systems based on some of the principles of terra preta. And this isn’t just for tropical agriculture. This could be very important for U.S. agriculture.

“Terra Preta could mean a reduction in environmental pollution. What works as a retaining mechanism in Amazonia could work in the United States where there are concerns of phosphates and nitrates entering groundwater and streams. We have only begun to realize the potential of how this could reduce pollution in industrialized countries.

“Luckily the principles of creating bio-char soils will be very similar no matter what area of the world you’re in. Results obtained in Brazil will be pertinent for the United States.

“In terms of widespread adoption, it’s still some way away. There are still knowledge gaps. For instance, we know there are important differences in the effects of bio-char on soil fertility depending on what material you use and what temperature and under what conditions the char is produced. That’s something we should be able to resolve within a year or two. Once that’s done, we can take the systems to Extension Services around the world and make larger scale, on-farm research plots.

“We’re already working with dozens of Kenyan farmers on this. The project only began this year. By next year, we hope to have a better idea of how this works on farms.”

Where will the bio-char come from?

“Perhaps agricultural and forestry waste products could be the answer.

“Something else that gets us very excited is a link to energy production systems (utilizing) pyrolysis...

“Really, pyrolysis is a just a complicated word for making charcoal. Prototypes of this system for commercial power plants have been developed. These create bio-oil, hydrogen and other co-products — including bio-char — from the production of charcoal.

“We want to gain a better understanding of what effects this bio-char has on soil functions. It should be quite similar to a bio-char produced in a kiln or field. Such a system will be an entry point for large-scale production and use.

“There are competing uses for the power plant byproducts. Currently, power plants either use the byproducts for their own energy needs or they sell it to be used as charcoal briquettes.

“It could become profitable as soon as some of the environmental effects — currently external — are internalized. For instance, cleaner streams, cleaner groundwater, carbon sequestration and other things.”

For more information, visit www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm

Benny Peiser heralds end of Kyoto

This article by Benny Peiser was published this morning in the Financial Post. The Kyoto circus continues on to its inevitable demise amid rancor and recrimination. It could only fail from inception since the business model is grossly flawed and completely an invitation to greed and stupidity. What were they thinking?

As I have intimated but not perhaps fully enunciated, the carbon economy can be made to work for everyone provided everyone participates and provided the business model is simple enough to apply universally. I have described such a model.

It is enough that all carbon emitters buy offsetting carbon credits on the open market without exception. It is enough that a licensing system be put in place to permit the origination and sale of these credits worldwide. The brokers will be quite happy to take care of the details and prices will soon sort themselves out.

Every farmer in the world can then become a carbon credit granter by simply manufacturing terra preta soils using corn or maize culture as I have already described. On top of all that, a good way to place foreign aid money is to simply use it to buy carbon credits from third world farmers at market prices. This will slowly sponge up a surplus over actual production rolling back the CO2 surplus.

It is an absolute waste of time and resources to attempt to make this happen from further up the food chain which is the fatal flaw with Kyoto. Making the rich pay has always resulted in the poor dying.

If an international consensus is impossible, then internal national deals can go a long way toward obviating the problem. For example, Canada has a huge CO2 production problem, thanks to the fact that we are on the way to becoming the global oil reserve backstop. If we convert all our land capable of growing corn into terra preta soils, it will take a minimum of twenty years and create the most fertile soils on earth, effectively doubling agricultural production.

This then becomes a classic case of the rich getting richer. I suspect that all developed countries can benefit by taking this approach, even to the extent of successfully offsetting the entire problem. It is just that it would be more satisfying to use this need to lift two billion people out of the subsistence lifestyle globally over the next two generations.

Any other approach is no more than cash grabs by stupid and greedy elites. I get tired of listening to it.

Climate blowback

The CO2 crusade only generates hostility against the West; Benny Peiser

Financial Post Published: Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Imagine, there is a UN climate conference, and hardly anybody seems to note or care. This is what appears to have happened with the latest round of post-Kyoto negotiations that ended in Bangkok last Friday. While delegates from more than 160 nations met at yet another United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change confab in the Thai capital, much of the media seemed indifferent to its deliberations or did not bother to report about it.

What used to be major environmental gatherings that would trigger global media hype and front-page headlines has turned into routine diplomatic meetings that wrap up, these days, on more or less the same note: Let's meet again. Eight more such meetings are planned for the next 18 months to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.

Instead of the passionately celebrated "breakthroughs" that used to be the hallmark of international climate conferences, today they often end in deadlock and disappointment.

At the heart of the solidifying standoff lies a growing realization that the entire Kyoto process has been an abject failure. Not only did it fail to slow (never mind reduce) carbon-dioxide emissions over the last 15 years or so, climate hysteria is pitting rich and poor nations against each other, dividing the world into opposing camps that embrace incompatible strategies and competing demands.

Developing nations insist that the rich world unilaterally commit to stringent and legally binding CO2 emissions cuts at home. At the same time, they also demand massive wealth transfers from the West in the form of 'clean' technologies and financial funds for adaptation and energy initiatives.

The self-inflicted damage as a result of Western climate policies has been ruinous. Japan alone faces a Kyoto bill of more than US$500-billion -- if the country endeavours to cut CO2 emissions by 11% over the next decade. No wonder, then, that Japan has officially given up on Kyoto and is now calling for a much softer replacement based on select sectoral, rather than national emission targets.

In Europe, too, policy-makers and business leaders now realize that the European Union's unilateral actions are threatening to drive energy-intensive industries abroad. According to recent estimates, European industries are expected to shoulder ¤50-billion to ¤80-billion ($128-billion) per year if the EU's agreed climate targets were to become legally binding. Unsurprisingly, the European Commission has now warned that it will abandon its own goals if the rest of the world won't agree to a new climate treaty.

These staggering costs, however, pale in comparison with what China and the developing nations are demanding for their signature under any new climate treaty. Arguing that Europe, Japan and North America have caused much of the buildup of the world's CO2 emissions in the atmosphere over the last century or so, China has called on Western nations to hand over 0.5% of their GDP per year in form of funds and clean-technology transfer to developing nations to counter global warming. China's demand amounts to a wealth transfer of around US$200-billion a year from the OECD to the rest of the world, of which US$65-billion annually would come from the United States alone.

China's exorbitant request, however, has been eclipsed by demands by African campaigners, who are charging a payback that is twice as high. At the Bangkok meeting, African non-governmental organizations called on rich countries to commit 1% of their GDP each year -- for Africa alone -- for adaptation policies dealing with the effects of climate change, in addition to existing development aid.

In response to mounting pressure and demands, the West is trying to divide the developing world by treating China and India differently to poorer countries. It is attempting to draw China and India, now defined as "major emitters," into an

Stop already! We are not going to reduce CO2 emissions until every human being is rich or the oil actually runs out, whichever comes first. But we can sequester it all in farm soils forever.

international regime of binding emissions cuts. Despite many years of self-righteous denunciation and disagreement, most industrialized countries have begun to band together around Tony Blair's and President George Bush's long-established strategy, which is beginning to enjoy bipartisan support in most Western capitals. Even in Washington there is now a solid bipartisan consensus on this red line. This hardening stance means that any climate treaty that does not include China and India has absolutely no chance of being ratified by the U.S. Senate -- regardless of whom the next U.S. president may be.

Nevertheless, the West's feeble response to international pressure is a defensive strategy. It is looked upon with bitterness in many parts of the world where climate campaigners have created a mood of anti-American anger and resentment. While the Western approach may be able to corner the rising giants of China and India, it will almost certainly fail to compel them to commit to legally binding emissions cuts-- in whatever form.

As a result of promoting environmental alarmism, Western governments find themselves trapped in a perilous, yet largely self-constructed catch. As long as climate change is elevated as the principal liability of industrial countries, as long as Western CO2 emissions are blamed for exacerbating natural disasters, death and destruction around the globe, green pressure groups and officials from the developing world will continue to insist that the West is liable to recompense its exorbitant carbon debt by way of wealth transfer and financial compensation.

Yet this is highly unlikely to happen. Attempts to punish developing countries by introducing carbon tariffs, on the other hand, would only create more fury and resentment. Ultimately, there is now a growing risk that the whole global-warming scare is creating more anti-Western hostility and further loss of influence on the international stage.

Unless the industrial nations are prepared to sacrifice a substantial fraction of their wealth and economic stability, it is extremely unlikely that a new climate treaty will be agreed upon in the foreseeable future. While rich countries will put the blame squarely at the door of their Asian competitors, much of the rest of the world is likely to point the finger at Western greediness and intransigence. In this way, the global warming scare is creating a lose-lose situation for the West which is causing lasting damage to its standing, influence and economic strength.

-Benny Peiser is the editor of CCNet, an international science-policy network.

NAFTA oil independence

As I have posted before, we will be hearing a lot about the Bakken Formation, just as now we are all hearing about the Alberta tar sands. Both are expensive and difficult resources to tap, though clearly not as problematic as the Green River Formation in Colorado and Utah. I have posted the excellent Wikipedia article for a comprehensive description.

The tar sands do not have any porosity or permeability issues whatsoever. In fact, if you can cause separation, the recovery reaches nearly eighty percent. This means that the trillion barrel reserve is almost fully recoverable, provided you are prepared to go after it using mining methods.

The THAI in-situ process promises to deliver seventy percent recovery of areas treated at a very low cost and from considerable depth without nearly the environmental cost of mining. The process also partially upgrades the oil which is a major break. THAI process relies on the creation of an air fed burn front started at the toe of a horizontal well. The heat and pressure and process CO2 and process steam and nitrogen gas all assist in attacking the bitumen. This technique will eventually be used on many older partially depleted fields that have lost their gas drive or simply are too thick.

In other words, the current results are already amazing on formerly unrecoverable resources, and it is well worth a try on almost every other reservoir to see if it can help. I can even see folks pumping out an old water flood to try this on and cursing the idiots who authorized it in the first place. Not only does THAI bring at least one trillion barrels of bitumen in Alberta into full exploitation mode, it also likely brings another trillion barrels on stream from the Amazon that I know of. Add another trillion from known conventional fields and we now have three times all the oil that has ever been burned.

And remember folks, we are going to burn it all, regardless of all the conservation efforts, simply because it will always be a cheap feedstock for either energy production or synthetic materials. It will just take us a lot longer. Or let us rephrase it another way. How much oil do you think will be in the ground for use in ten thousand years?
This takes me now to the Bakken Formation. This is a great oil resource that likely represents half a trillion barrels of oil in place at a depth of two miles. Unfortunately, the recovery runs at an abysmal 4% or so though it appears that ten percent has been achieved. That means that the recoverable resource may be no more than fifty billion barrels. I will take it, but it is hard to imagine a more difficult technical challenge in the oil patch, but apparently secret breakthroughs have been made.

Without doubt this entails horizontal wells at the end of a ten thousand foot vertical string which alone is pushing the technology and some pretty nifty hydraulic fracing along the foot across the natural fracture planes of the oil bearing structure. Since it is in dolomite I suspect that this is an acid frac to boot. I am not sure if we should buy shares in the producers or Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s favorite company. Each well must cost at least ten to fifteen million.

In any event, this is not cheap oil and it still looks like you have to find the sweet spot at least for now. Welcome to the brave new world of folks with billion dollar balls. In any case one hundred dollar a barrel oil is on the march and North America, also known as NAFTA, is clearly on the road to total oil independence.

*-Bakken Formation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bakken Formation, initially described by geologist J.W. Nordquist in 1953,[1] is an immense blanket of rock from the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age occupying a substantial part of the subsurface of the Williston Basin, Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan. Covering about 200,000 square miles (520,000 km²), Bakken serves as a significant oil reservoir, and until recently has long frustrated efforts to extract its oil, initially discovered in 1951.

The formation consists of three members: lower shale, middle dolomite, and upper shale. The shales were deposited in relatively deep marine conditions, and the dolomite was deposited as a coastal carbonate bank during a time of shallower water. The middle dolomite member is the principal oil reservoir, roughly two miles below the surface.

Porosities in the Bakken average about 5%, and permeabilities are very low, averaging 0.04 millidarcies—much lower than typical oil reservoirs.[2] However, the presence of horizontal fractures makes the Bakken an excellent candidate for horizontal drilling techniques in which a well drills along the extent of the rock layer, rather than punching a hole vertically through it. In this way, many thousands of feet of oil reservoir rock can be penetrated in a unit that reaches a maximum thickness of only about 140 feet (40 m).[3] Production is also enhanced by artificially fracturing the rock.[4]

The greatest Bakken oil production comes from Elm Coulee Oil Field, Richland County, Montana, where production began in 2000 and is expected to ultimately total 270 million barrels (43 million m³). In 2007, production from Elm Coulee averaged 53,000 barrels per day (84 m³/d) — more than the entire state of Montana a few years ago.[5]

New curiosity developed in 2007 when EOG Resources out of Houston, Texas reported that a single well it had drilled into an oil-rich layer of shale below Parshall, North Dakota is anticipated to produce 700,000 barrels (111,000 m³) of oil. Estimates for ultimate oil contained in the entire Bakken play range from 271 billion to 503 billion barrels (40–80 km³), with a mean of 413 billion barrels (65 km³) of technically recoverable and irrecoverable oil.[6]

This massive estimate appears to dwarf the estimated 50–70 billion barrels (8–11 km³) of technically recoverable and irrecoverable oil in Alaska's North Slope. A conservative estimate of Bakken's technically recoverable oil would be 1% to 3%, or between 4.1 and 12.4 billion barrels (0.6–2 km³) of oil, due to the fact that Bakken's shale is so tight. However, other estimates range from 10% to as high as 50% technically recoverable reserves.[7] By comparison, recoverable oil estimates in the Alaska formation are 30% to 50%, or a mean of 26 billion barrels (4 km³).

Not counting the Bakken Formation, there are about 175 billion barrels (28 km³) of technically recoverable oil in the United States,[8] so the formation represents a substantial increase in U.S. reserves, which can be produced at an estimated cost of $20–40 a barrel.[9]

Starting in March, 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey will re-survey the Williston Basin which includes the Bakken Formation.[10]

Doubling Crop Production

This item came out last summer and is a report on a field trial using biochar in Australia. Most importantly they mixed biochar at the rate of ten tons per acre. This is equivalent to any likely protocol that will be used by farming over a ten to twenty year cycle with corn or bagasse or any other natural biomass source to achieve the same result..

The yield doubled over all obvious variations on soils that are known to be somewhat infertile and even slightly toxic. This confirms the contention that all soils can likely be optimized to full optimal fertility throughout the globe. This is an astounding idea. We already know it works in the impossible rainforest environment and now we know it can be used on the unforgiving semi tropical nutrient depleted Australian soils.

Prior work supporting this contention came from the work done on zeolites by the Cubans. Zeolites and carbon are also known, if activated, as solid crystalline acids. So it comes as no surprise that enrichment with a strong dose of char will reconstitute soil biome in way that strongly supports general fertility.

I have already suggested that at the subsistence level of agriculture, char can be distributed in hills, reducing the initial dilution with soil for maximum initial utility. The char itself can be made up in a drum, if the supply is small or alternately in an earthen kiln best made from corn stover using the root pads to build the outer shell.
In large scale operations with an industrial kiln available, it is likely best to convert a small sub field each year to full terra preta status.

As I have been posting, this soil revolution will optimize every farm field on earth and lead to a possible near doubling of global production just on the lands we now use. The real payoff will be in the tropics were this method, perhaps using earthen kilns, will allow tropical soils to be fully exploited rather than present slash and burn.

There are very few places on earth where maximum fertility is achieved. I likely live in one of them. But I have walked over many hungry looking fields and have seen many areas that screamed for fertility management. One memory was driving through Germany any seeing a lone straggling blackberry vine in the fencerow. Later that afternoon, my uncle showed me his prize blackberry vine in his garden. In the Fraser Valley, black berry vines inundate the empty spaces if given half a chance producing true impenetrable barbed jungles. Yet the climate is just as benign in Germany. The only difference is a thousand years of hard cropping.

In short, even without watering the deserts, the world can handle a population of ten to twenty billion with this knowledge.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Research confirms biochar in soils boosts crop yields

New research confirms the huge and revolutionary potential of soils to reduce greenhouse gases on a large scale, increase agricultural production while at the same time delivering carbon-negative biofuels based on feedstocks that require less fertilizer and water. Trials at Australia's New South Wales Department of Primary Industries’ (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute show that crops grown on agrichar-improved soils received a major boost. The findings come at a time when carbon-negative bioenergy is becoming one of the most widely debated topics in the renewable energy and climate change community.

The Australian trials of 'agrichar' or 'biochar' have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop growth when applied at the rate of 10 tonnes per hectare. The technique of storing agrichar in soils is now seen as a potential saviour to restore fertility to depleted or nutrient-poor soils (especially in the tropics), and as a revolutionary technique to mitigate climate change. Moreover, agrichar storage in soils is a low-tech practise, meaning it can be implemented on a vast scale in the developing world, relatively quickly.

Agrichar is a black carbon byproduct of a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy. Pyrolysis of biomass results in the production of bio-oil, that can be further refined into liquid biofuels for transport (earlier post, on Dynamotive's trials). When the agrichar is consequently sequestered into soils, the biofuels become carbon-negative - that is, they take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than they release. This way, they can clean up our past emissions. No other renewable energy technology has both the advantages of being carbon-negative while at the same time being physically tradeable.

The biochar sequestration technique is now confirmed to boost soil fertility while storing carbon long-term. New South Wales Department of Primary Industries' senior research scientist Dr Lukas Van Zwieten said soils naturally turn over about 10 times more greenhouse gas on a global scale than the burning of fossil fuels.

“So it is not surprising there is so much interest in a technology to create clean energy that also locks up carbon in the soil for the long term and lifts agricultural production,” he said.

Multiple benefits

The trials at Wollongbar have focused on the benefits of agrichar to agricultural productivity: “When applied at 10t/ha, the biomass of wheat was tripled and of soybeans was more than doubled,” said Dr Van Zwieten. This percentage increase remained the same when applications of nitrogen fertiliser were added to both the agrichar and the control plots. For the wheat, agrichar alone was about as beneficial for yields as using nitrogen fertiliser only. And that is without considering the other benefits of agrichar.

Regarding soil chemistry, Dr Van Zwieten said agrichar raised soil pH at about one-third the rate of lime, lifted calcium levels and reduced aluminium toxicity on the red ferrosol soils of the trial. Soil biology improved, the need for added fertiliser reduced and water holding capacity was raised. The trials also measured gases given off from the soils and found significantly lower emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas more than 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide):

Dust and Soot

This article is a timely reminder that dust and soot impact hugely, although both are actually been progressively tackled as global industrialization advances. The richer our economy becomes, the less willing we are to tolerate having smoke blowing in our faces. China and India are no different. The yelling has already started and the polluters are slowly responding.

Cleaning up our own house is the easy part. Even converting all of humanity into manufacturers of terra preta is also easy. It can even happen rather quickly and certainly within a lifespan, thanks to the communication revolution.

What is not so easy is cleaning up nature’s house. The global desert needs to be covered in vegetation in order to end the constant mobilization of dust into the atmosphere. This will take technology and sustained investment. Again I have described some of the how, but as yet there is little will.

The other monkey on the global back is the constant threat of a massive volcanic eruption. This is an event that at best wreaks growing seasons for at least two seasons by filling the atmosphere with volcanic dust and gases.

A globally unified reserve system needs to be in place in which long lasting staples maintain a long inventory train. It would entail a global treaty in which designated food stuffs must be warehoused for two years before sale.

This pushes the cost out onto the market, yet ensures a very long train if a major disaster occurs. It goes without saying that this also cushions localized disasters. A drought in the Midwest would be countered by a drawdown of warehoused stocks, to be quietly rebuilt over the succeeding years as fresh crops come in.

It also must be a global decision because the real costs of sustaining inventory must be bourn by all.

Dust plays huge role in climate change

Tiny particles heat up the atmosphere faster than scientist once believed. The good news is this dust can be cleaned up fairly quickly.

By Robert C. Cowen Columnist
from the April 3, 2008 edition Christian Science monitor

Science columnist Robert Cowen talks about atmospheric dust and its effect on climate.

Scientists know that dust affects climate. Tiny particles create veils that reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere. Dark particles absorb sunshine and warm things up. But as scientists look deeper into the dust-climate connection, they find that they have underestimated its importance.

Research published April 3 in Nature reveals the tight linkage between atmospheric dust flows and Antarctic temperatures during ice ages over the past 800,000 years. A research review published March 23 in Nature Geoscience online shows that black carbon particles in the atmosphere have a more powerful global-warming effect than any of the greenhouse gases except carbon dioxide. And these particles are 60 percent as effective as CO2 itself. That's far more powerful than the estimate in last year's report of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The good news is that black carbon particles such as diesel soot or wood-stove smoke only stay airborne for weeks. (It takes a century to get rid of today's CO2 emissions.) This fact offers an opportunity for instant payback, say study authors V. Ramanathan at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and Gregory Carmichael at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. In an announcement from Scripps, the authors note that commercially available technologies exist to cut back soot emissions substantially. Using them would rapidly reduce black-carbon warming.

Dr. Ramanathan explains that the difference between the study estimate of the sooty warming and that of the IPCC is the difference between inadequate computer modeling and actual observation. The Carmichael-Ramanathan estimate integrated data from satellite, aircraft, and ground instrumentation. This shows a black-particle warming of 0.9 watts per square meter. The IPCC estimate was between 0.2 and 0.4 watts per square meter.

In China and India, home cooking with wood and cow dung in addition to home heating with coal contribute 25 to 35 percent of the global atmosphere's black particle burden. Areas that use a lot of diesel fuel contribute comparable amounts. Ramanathan says the next phase of this research is "to examine if black carbon is also having a large role in the retreat of arctic sea ice and Himalayan glaciers."

Meanwhile, Fabrice Lambert at the University of Bern in Switzerland and colleagues are taking advantage of an unbroken 800,000-year climate record in an Antarctic ice core to track dust flows into the region. They find what they call "a significant correlation" between dust coming into the region and Antarctic cooling. They suggest that the 25-fold increase in dust inflow they see during glacial times relates to stronger South American dust sources. Also, less rainfall during those times allows dust to stay airborne longer than when more abundant rain washed it out. It's what the research team calls "a progressive coupling of the climates of Antarctic and lower latitudes" during glacial times.

Such results show that climate modelers need to take careful account of dust in their climate change scenarios. So, too, should the delegates from 163 countries now meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, as they schedule the drafting of a new global-warming mitigation agreement. They might find the prospect of a quick payback from curbing black-particle emissions attractive.

Chris Nelder on Current Oil Supply

It is timely to revisit the developing energy squeeze. This excellent survey report is by Chris Nelder in Energy and Capital. The original report has a few charts that I dropped for this report. Besides, I do not think that anyone has missed the very real fact that we are experiencing a repricing of our economic staples and that it hurts. And I live in the one place on earth that is able to dodge the bullet. As we speak, Canadian farmers are gearing up to plant the biggest wheat crop in years and this winter surely has loaded the soil with plenty of rain water.

I underlined the comment on the likely 2010 peak for all liquids. That is the growing consensus. In the meantime high prices are now shifting investment into every possible energy option that works in this pricing regime. The scramble is on.

On a more optimistic note, we have burned one trillion barrels of cheap oil. We have another one trillion barrels of similar oil in the ground to be winkled out. We have two to three trillion barrels of heavy oil in huge fields commencing exploitation and I would guess another two to three trillion barrels of heavy oil fields in smaller abandoned reservoirs. No one bothered to keep track of those turkeys.

We now have with THAI technology a low cost, low input, low footprint method of recovering close to eighty percent of all that oil. So the oil age is not going to end in the medium term, but it certainly promises to be bumpy in the short term.

And if we are determined to burn another eight trillion barrels of heavy oil, then we need every farmer on earth to produce terra preta soils in order to sequester all the CO2.

The Energy Debate Is Over

By Chris Nelder | Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

In Part 1 of this series, I'm Changing My Name to JPMorgan, we looked at the subprime crisis, the dollar, and how the financial landscape has affected commodity prices.

Today, we dig deeper into each major source of energy, and look at the fundamentals that are driving their skyrocketing costs.

Oil

Oil prices have been on everyone's mind, having spiked 76% over the last year, and 16% in 2008 alone:

The reasons for the huge rise in oil-and the reasons why gasoline hasn't kept pace with it, which we will get to in a moment-are complex and interrelated, but we'll try to sort them out.

Up until about mid-2007, oil prices were mostly about fundamentals: the ever-tightening supply situation that we have chronicled on these pages week after week, terrorist attacks and sabotage of oil facilities and pipelines, geopolitical tensions, and the skyrocketing demand for energy from the world's developing economies.

But in September, the market dynamics changed. The first Fed rate cut in four years on September 18 set off a flight of capital to commodities seeking a relatively liquid safe haven from the devaluation of the dollar. And oil prices began increasing at a far faster rate.

Most pundits were slow to recognize this key factor, and continued to point to Nigeria, OPEC, and so on. Only in recent weeks have I noticed the dollar cited as a primary reason for oil prices. Apparently, setting new record lows session after session got their attention.

Compare this chart of the dollar vs. the Euro to the oil price chart above. Note the way that both lines sharply change their trajectories in September.:

Oil had to increase in price just to maintain its value, since it is predominantly traded in dollars worldwide. In turn, this has led to price increases across the board (that is, inflation), since everything requires energy.

But the dollar's fall is only part-I would guess around half-of the impetus behind the rising cost of oil. The flight of speculative capital to commodities in general suggests that oil prices have probably gotten ahead of their proper value, as a purer market would find it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a correction in oil price some time in the next few weeks, particularly as the health of the U.S. economy becomes more dubious. Our main trading partner, China, is already moderating its growth expectations accordingly. Oil fell sharply on Monday and Wednesday of this week, from an all-time high of $111.80 to $102.49 as I write.

Discounting the speculative froth in oil, if the price were to return to the trendline of the last five years or so, it would still be around $85-90 a barrel:

That trendline truly is about the fundamentals, as the supply of oil continues to get tighter, and the world's already thin spare production capacity gets thinner still. It appears that the raging growth of the world's red-hot economies-China, India, Russia, and the Middle East-will more than offset declining demand from the U.S. and Europe.

So even if our economy continues to slump, I think oil prices will remain high. My estimated range for this year is $85-150/bbl, but untoward events could cause much higher price spikes, as we saw with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

For its part, OPEC has not been inclined to increase production, calling the oil supply adequate and pointing the finger at speculators for high prices. Even if they were to release more oil to the market, they say, it wouldn't lower prices very much.

In the current environment, I tend to agree with this view. But the amount of actual spare production capacity OPEC has is still shrouded in secrecy, and for all we know their ability to increase production now may be negligible. OECD crude inventories in December (the most recent available data) stood at 52 days of demand cover, which is near the bottom of the December range over the last 10 years.

Worldwide, there is very little reason to be optimistic about crude production. Higher prices for everything from oil to cement are continuing to delay and cast doubt upon the prospects of some impending oil and gas projects, particularly marginal projects like tar sands, and extreme technology projects like deepwater drilling. (See my article on this subject from last year, Receding Horizons Part 1 and Receding Horizons Part 2.) The economic axiom that higher prices always result in greater supply has begun to fail, as the physical realities of finite fossil fuel production trump economic theory.

For the next two years, according to recent forecasts by the IEA and EIA (which were typically optimistic about supply growth, particularly from non-OPEC producers, despite their similar forecasts having been proved wrong for several years running), we will increasingly depend on non-crude oil, primarily natural gas liquids, to fill the supply gap.

In sum, it seems increasingly likely to me that the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) forecast of the absolute global peak of "all liquids" by 2010 will be just about on the money. If we should see a worldwide recession over the next two years, the reduced demand might bring us another year or more of production at 2010 levels, forming more of a short plateau of oil production than a sharp peak. But given the many years that it takes to bring new supply online, the production capacity story for the next five years has effectively already been written.

Among the analysts I respect (and more than a few oil company CEOs), the peak oil "debate" is essentially over. There is a growing consensus that we're staring down the peak within the next two or three years, five tops, and there is nothing short of failing economies that can change that.

The much-anticipated production from relatively new finds in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere (including the recent announcement about the potential of the Bakken formation in the center of the U.S.) are all likely to come online some years after the peak, and the production rates they will achieve are unknown. No doubt every last drop of it will be welcome, and fetch a pretty penny, but in terms of the big picture, they can only help to buy us a little more time-a year or three-before global production starts to drop off.

If we use that time to continue to invest heavily in energy after fossil fuels, it will be a good thing. But if we use it to merely crawl a little further out on the limb of petroleum dependence, we'll just fall that much harder after the peak. Given the recent efforts in Congress to use the occasion of today's high prices to press once more for drilling in ANWR, and their refusal to demand adequate improvements in fuel efficiency, I'm sorry to say that my money is on the latter scenario.

Gasoline

One of the strangest aspects of the huge run in oil prices has been the fact that gasoline prices haven't kept pace. The "crack spread," or the profit on refining a barrel of crude into saleable products, has collapsed from around $22 last spring to less than a buck (or in some cases, even a loss). For pure refiners, like my stalwart favorites Valero (NYSE: VLO) and Tesoro (NYSE: TSO), this has translated into crushing 30 to 50% losses in their share prices over the last six months-a selloff that I continue to believe is very overdone.

This phenomenon is ascribed to the refiners' belief that if they raise gasoline prices much further, buyers will go elsewhere, cutting into their market share. Integrated oil companies who have profits from other parts of their business are able to take some minor losses from their refining operations for a while and keep selling gasoline. Indeed, lower than expected demand for gasoline has built up inventories to the high end of the average range.

Still, nobody can operate for long at such razor thin margins, let alone losses. If the independent refiners substantially cut back operations in today's environment, it would lead to higher gasoline prices as the supply cushion is eroded, thus restoring their profitability.

So I do expect the crack spread to return back to a normal range, and along with it, I expect average gasoline prices to approach the $4 range by summer (although official summer prices forecasts have recently been reduced, to account for the economic slump).

Natural Gas and Electricity

Gas prices have been steadily moving up since last summer, pushing to over $10 per thousand cubic feet two weeks ago, with futures prices holding steady in the $9-10 range:

In part, the rise in natural gas prices has been driven by the rising cost of coal, as power plants search for the lowest cost fuel. It has also been supported by a reduction in liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports to the U.S. (as we'll discuss in Part 3). LNG imports fell to 0.8 Bcf/day in February, down from 1.5 Bcf/day in February of last year, and about 3 Bcf/day last summer. Gas inventories look poised to end the usual withdrawal season on April 1 right about 210 Bcf lower than last year.

Even so, relative to oil prices, gas has been cheap. The historical ratio of oil to gas prices (dollars per barrel of oil divided by dollars per thousand cubic feet of gas) is between 6 and 9, but in February it was over 11. On a BTU equivalent basis, gas is 6 times cheaper than oil. Most analysts expect the ratio to revert to the mean, but they expect the gap to be closed by falling oil prices, whereas I expect it to be closed primarily by rising gas prices. In addition to the abovementioned factors, my view is based on the fact that gas prices are now below that of residual fuel oil from petroleum, which is an alternate to coal and gas for power plant fuel. Power operators will likely take advantage of the disparity by switching fuels to gas, further supporting the price.

Since natural gas has been the fuel of choice for power plant operators for the last many years, thanks to its lower emissions, relatively low cost, and the ability to start up and shut down gas-fired plants at will, grid electricity prices tend to be set at the margin by the spot price of gas. Average electric bills in New England have approximately doubled since 2000, right along with the corresponding cost of gas.

Accordingly, my big three plays on gas, Encana (NYSE: ECA), Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) and Southwestern Energy (NYSE: SWN) have all gained around 50% over the last year, and from 47% to 106% over the last two years.

Looking a few years out, the outlook for gas is plagued with questions. If new LNG export capacity, particularly from Russia and Qatar, is developed over the next few years, we might continue to see gas prices rise at the relatively slow pace that they have in recent years. We may also see a somewhat significant increase in domestic production from unconventional sources like the Barnett Shale, which we have covered in these pages over the last few months.

On the whole, I expect production to continue to decline in North America, as it has since the 2002 production peak. Global LNG supply may increase, but it will continue to seek higher prices outside the U.S. as long as developing economies maintain their current red-hot growth rates, and as long as it is preferred over coal for its lower emissions. My bet is that gas prices will continue to rise steadily for the next several years, and that grid power cost will continue to keep pace with gas, at least until we have built a great deal more generation capacity from renewables.

Coal

Coal prices have varied little for the last three years:

According to the EIA, the rising level of exports reached its highest level since 1998 last year because supply in the world's fastest-growing economies has been limited, and the falling dollar has made it more attractively priced. Russia has halted its exports of metallurgical coal to satisfy its own needs, and Australia, the world's largest exporter of coal, has faced shipping delays. Global coal demand growth is primarily driven by the steelmaking industries of Asia and South America (particularly Brazil), and by the power plant needs of China. China is both the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, making it also the world's greatest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, and became a net importer last year.

The growth in U.S. coal imports, while less dramatic than exports, has been driven by relatively flat domestic production, as shown in the following chart. This caused power plant operators to draw down their inventories (which had been at an historic high) and to seek coal from abroad.

Having enjoyed two years of rocketing growth in their share prices from 2004-mid 2006, the stocks of major coal producers such as Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) and Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) have moderated (with some notable price spikes) and now stand about where they were at the beginning of 2006. In part, this may be a reflection of the Street's growing concern about the future of coal usage in the face of increasing public pressure to control greenhouse gases.

While I enjoyed some nice gains from the coal producers during their run-up, I have remained mostly out of the sector for the last two years. There are occasional opportunities to make a quick 20% on the price spikes of these shares, but timing them is tricky, and the greenhouse gas issue adds a level of risk I'm not quite comfortable with.

More to the point, growth in domestic coal demand is primarily driven by electricity generation, which has grown very steadily:

However, the political climate is strongly in favor of meeting that growing need from renewables, rather than coal. Indeed, recently introduced legislation threatens to put the kibosh on new coal-fired power plants entirely unless they employ carbon emissions control systems. While coal-consuming power operators have been quick to point out that the technology exists, they have been so far unwilling to deploy it, citing cost concerns.

Renewables

In stark contrast to the increasingly discouraging outlook for the production of fossil fuels, renewables have been on an absolute tear.

The global solar industry has been growing at nearly 50% per year since 2002, effectively doubling global production every two years. The global market now stands at about $11 billion, with 12,400 MW of deployed capacity. In part, this amazing growth is due to increasing incentive programs, which are succeeding in driving costs down to the point where parity with coal-fired grid power is expected within the new few years.

Likewise, wind power has been growing at the rate of about 25% per year worldwide in recent years. Since 1990, wind generating capacity has doubled roughly every three and a half years. Wind power is already cheaper than power from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants in most cases, ensuring its continued growth. Global wind capacity currently stands at about 94 GW.

Although they are nascent technologies, geothermal and marine energy systems are quickly gaining ground as well, thanks to growing R&D budgets funded by the First World in pursuit of emissions-free power.

The trends are exactly as we have predicted: the cost of traditional fossil fuels is going up, and the cost of renewables is going down. We see no reason to expect those trends to change any time soon.

On the whole, investing in energy for the long term is a no-brainer, as long as the world's developing economies keep chugging along. The slowing demand of the First World isn't going to stop this train.

And the recent selloff in commodities presents some excellent buying opportunities.

Next week, we'll explore the interrelationships between food, energy, and weather, and perhaps illuminate why the price of bread is fomenting violence and protests worldwide.

Until then,

Energy and Capital

Economic Winds

The one certain economic truth that we have once again been absorbing is that the price of oil matters everywhere. I do not know what percentage of economic activity it represents today, but last time during the late seventies it was around 12% of the economy. It declined as efficiencies rose but it certainly is still in the double digit zone or just under.

That means, children, that doubling the price as we saw in the past year or so is oil’s attempt to claw a much larger share of the economy. Avoiding this, the rest of the economy restructures the pricing of other elements. Thus food prices climb sharply and the US dollar sinks. This last year has seen a rolling price readjustment throughout the entire global economy unlike anything since the late seventies.

So far the damage has been controlled because the price move has been only three to four fold of the previous base and has moved slowly. Also the real estate and credit collapse has tempered all lending which would only worsen the situation. This time lending activity is no longer fueling a rising market which suggests that any inflationary adjustment will remain appropriate.

Although it still feels ugly, we may just slide by with a soft landing for the global economy. If that in fact occurs, then we will have been blessed.

What bothers me most is that there exists any number of scenarios whose outcome would be catastrophic and no sense that these minefields are been navigated with anything approaching good sense. How is that retail bank deposit type money is been solicited by brokers who never had the secure capital base to profitably handle the business. We always knew better, yet greed has persuaded another crop of greenhorns to gamble with the global financial system.

Eventually some generation will truly lose it and the financial destruction could be fatal. I abhor this recurrent recklessness and the ongoing inability of the institutions to counter it.

I have lived to see far too many hard won rule books converted into a manual for grabbing cash when the money flowed. I most recall a new stock salesman preparing for the broker exam, reading the admonishment over guaranteeing price, time and profit, turning around and enthusiastically using the admonishment almost word for word to sell stock to the public. It is really easy to imagine a young MBA in an investment bank jumping on past abuses and repackaging them.

Right now enough fear has been introduced into the global economy to generate a true slowdown. The price shifts are doing their own magic and a full year of this should fill every warehouse. In a way the horses are once again responding to the reins. Since it will take years for the banking industry to get over this last drunken binge, they will be back to been conservative.

Five years without ten percent growth would allow massive consolidation and proper redistribution of resources and wealth. Perhaps China can democratize from the bottom up and perhaps India can start paying their civil service so that bribery can be suppressed. It is this that will matter for the next wave of global growth.

I have also seen many unlikely scenarios work out over the past forty years and know, that so long as we continue to avoid war, Korea will reunite and rapidly become richer and Tibet will establish home rule with honored seats in the parliament of China. I know that the seventh century will also be silenced in the Middle East, again unleashing another people’s resourcefulness.

Again the ashes of yet another price upheaval are blowing in the wind and we will prevail.

Dominic Woolf on Biochar

Dominic Woolf has recently published a thirty page study on biochar titled ‘Biochar as a soil amendment: A review of the environmental implications’

http://orgprints.org/13268/01/Biochar_as_a_soil_amendment_-_a_review.pdf

This report is a bit too long to republish in its entirety but I think it is useful to copy the summary conclusions. I will likely copy other portions with commentary as appropriate.

It is worth reading in its entirety as it will bring the reader completely up to date with the present apparent state of the art. My one comment is more in line with my own proposed methodology for production as likely employed by the Amazonians. It is that industrial techniques such as metal kilns or barrels are isolating the feedstock during the burn phase.

The corn culture earthen kiln should not only be reasonably efficient but also more inefficient in terms of the completeness of the burn. I suspect that this matters in practice and I would hate to miss something important by sticking to modern kilns.

I sense that a collapsed earthen kiln will leave a high quality biochar blended with an appropriate amount of soil, whereas a metal kiln will produce a uniform powdered char product with far less variation and perhaps much less biological utility. We need to compare both protocols in the field to see what we should be striving for.

9. Summary

In conclusion, we can say that biochar appears, given the current state of knowledge, to have potential both for greenhouse gas mitigation and as a soil improver. Considerable uncertainties remain, however, about its applicability to different soils and crops and about how much biochar production is feasible with respect to constraints on economics, land availability and competing demands for biomass (including direct incorporation into the soil). The uncertainties and areas requiring further research are outlined below:

• A maximum of 1 PgCyr-1 biochar might be produced from agricultural residues (if all current global agricultural residues were converted to biochar). In practice, this figure will be constrained by cost, suitability of different residues, requirements to incorporate residues into the soil, and other competing demands.

How much biochar might be produced from agricultural residues once such constraints have been taken into account is a matter for further research.

• Estimates of how much biomass might be produced by dedicated cropping remains a highly debated question. At the low end, figures from Sims et al (2006) suggest that between 0.06 - 0.7 PgC yr-1 might be realistically achievable by 2025. At the high end, figures from Smeets et al (2007) suggest that up to 46 PgC yr-1 might be achievable if we were to transform the planet into a large factory farm. More detailed studies at the local level will be required to ascertain the true potential for dedicated production of biomass.

• Other potential sources of biomass include shifting cultivation, forestry residues, sewage and waste streams such as food waste and paper/cardboard. Further research will be required to ascertain the combined potential of all possible sources of biomass for biochar production.

• How rapidly biochar may oxidise in different environments is still largely unknown, although its observed recalcitrance under many conditions gives reason for optimism that the rate of decay of black carbon in soil will be sufficiently slow to make it a useful form of carbon sequestration.

• Co-production of biochar and energy is clearly possible (as demonstrated by the fact that pyrolysis technologies designed for energy production alone produce a residue of char). However, there is a conflict between maximising energy or biochar production. For a 45% yield of char, a maximum of 32% of the available energy from the biomass will be recoverable. For a 20% yield of char on the other hand, a maximum of 72% of the available energy from the biomass will be recoverable. The optimisation between biochar and energy production will require balancing considerations of climate change mitigation, energy demand, economics and engineering, and requires further research and development.

• Whilst a beneficial effect of biochar soil additions on crop yields has been demonstrated for a small number of soil/crop combinations, its utility in a wide range of soil/crop types (particularly in temperate zones) remains to be demonstrated. This will require consideration not just of its effect on nutrient cycles, but also on hydrology.

• The effect of biochar production on nitrous oxide emissions is largely an unknown factor. Although there is a possibility that biochar additions may reduce N2O direct emissions from soils, and may also reduce indirect N2O emissions by

reducing nitrate run-off, neither of these possibilities has been adequately demonstrated under a range of different agricultural conditions. There is also the possibility that, if biochar is produced by dedicated cropping with application of mineral nitrogen fertilizer, the direct and indirect N2O emissions from this fertilizer will lead to an increase rather than a decrease in net N2O emissions.

• Biochar has the potential to either alleviate pressure on land use (by increasing crop yields) or to become a competing demand for land (in the case of dedicated cropping for biomass feedstock). Either way, the role of biochar in establishing a comprehensive land use strategy that meets the environmental, social and economic needs of the 21st century is in need of further consideration.

• It is possible that biochar may help to reduce nutrient run-off from soils and the associated problems of eutrophication and hypoxia of both inland and coastal waters. In what soils and under what conditions this might in fact be achieved remains to be shown. There is evidence that under some conditions, biochar may have the opposite effect of increasing leaching of applied mineral fertilizers.

• Despite its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the widespread land application of biochar might also have a detrimental effect on global warming by increasing the radiative forcing due to albedo. The extent to which this may be a problem, and the extent to which this may be mitigated by strategies such as maintaining a dense vegetation canopy over darkened soils requires further research.

Given the serious potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change, and the significant potential of biochar as a mitigation strategy, the uncertainties outlined above need to be resolved with some urgency.

EPA Demonstrates Common Sense

It is good to see the EPA demonstrating common sense, hard as that is to believe. Particularly after watching Al Gore push tortured analogies decrying the opponents of the global warming ideology. I am getting disturbed that some of this bone headed thinking will work itself into the global economic system.

The worst idea that I heard recently was that the developed world, after shipping our polluting industries offshore, should turn around and slap on a carbon tax on all imports. We really need to turn the current financial panic into a true depression.

I have rarely seen such a lack of economic leadership in the political world. Both Democratic candidates sound hopeless on the issue, although perhaps you can trust Hillary to actually do nothing as her husband had the good sense to do in a different time and place. Of course, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may think she means it about NAFTA, and if you live anywhere else, you sure as hell hope she doesn’t. Obama however, seems to be a follower of ideas that may betray him and he has not come out with a strong convincing economic position. Unfortunately, we can say the same thing about John McCain. He however, appears most likely to recognize and follow good advice. I am personally impressed by his support of the Iraqi surge and he is certainly the best option for wriggling out of there.

We have been blessed for the past forty years, to have had strong voices who have positively influenced economic policy and have benefited with a full twenty five years of solid economic expansion that reinvigorated both Europe and Japan and ignited the emergence of both China and India as viable economic powers.

Yet we always hear the voices of the economically ignorant who desperately want to promote state power in the naïve belief that this can work. How many Katrinas do we need? Human greed will trump good intentions every time.

That is the elephant at the party in China today. And it is starting to rumble. The only escape hatch for the Chinese political leadership with their loot is in fact to start a program of free elections, starting at the local level and quickly moving to the higher stages in two year steps. It could have been done slower, but I do not think that they have that much time left. Heaven no longer needs them.

The truth is that global warming was likely never tied to CO2 production as we have investigated this past year. But CO2 production without paying attention to CO2 offsets is just bad husbandry unless you think throwing night soil out the window is a sustainable practice. CO2 management is not about not burning fossil fuels – they will all one day be burned – it is about using good husbandry to maximize CO2 sequestration in the soils every way we can.

It struck me today that terra preta soil culture will permit the maximization of soil nutrient content. This means that no food crop should be ever nutrient deficient which is the holy grail of organic farmers. At this point, this is only my hypothesis, supported by a scattering of evidence. I suspect that it is both possible and sustainable.

Recall that in 10,000 years, that agricultural man has never had a way to create fertile soil easily if in fact at all in many circumstances. Corn culture terra preta does just that in just a few years. The resultant soil is a nutrient sponge.

EPA Signals Caution on Global Warming

By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government made clear on Thursday it will not be rushed into deciding whether to regulate emissions linked to global warming, as the Supreme Court directed nearly a year ago.

Such action "could affect many (emission) sources beyond just cars and trucks" and needs to be examined broadly as to other impacts, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote lawmakers.

Stephen Johnson said he has decided to begin the process by seeking public comment on the implications of regulating carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, on other agency rules that cover everything from power plants and factories to schools and small businesses.

That process could take months and led some of his critics to suggest he was shunting the sensitive issue to the next administration.

"This is the latest quack from a lame-duck EPA intent on running out the clock ... without doing a thing to combat global warming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. He is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Supreme Court said in April 2007 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to determine if CO2 emissions, linked to global warming, endanger public health and welfare.

If that is the case, the court said, the EPA must regulate the emissions.

The ruling, in a lawsuit by Massachusetts against the EPA, dealt only with pollution from cars and trucks.

Johnson said Thursday that if CO2 is found to endangered public health and welfare, the agency probably would have to curtail such emissions from other sources as well. That could affect a range of air pollution, from cement factories, refineries and power plants to cars, aircraft, schools and off-road vehicles.

"Rather than rushing to judgment on a single issue, this approach allows us to examine all the potential effects of a decision with the benefit of the public insight," Johnson wrote the leaders of the House and Senate environment committees.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that Johnson has had nearly a year to respond to the court but "now, instead of action, we get more foot-dragging."

"Time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change. This letter makes it clear that Mr. Johnson and the Bush administration are not on our side, either," Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly. Johnson has said that enacting tougher automobile mileage requirements in December meant that the issue had to be re-examined.

Johnson said a requirement for greater use of renewable fuels such as ethanol changed the landscape when it comes to CO2 regulation.

"It does not change EPA's obligation to provide a response to the Supreme Court decision," Johnson wrote Congress.

Environmentalists said Johnson's approach seemed to signal no meaningful action on climate change.

"EPA has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group, added, "This means any real action is going to come in the next administration."

But lawyer Chet Thompson, a former EPA deputy general counsel, said Johnson's approach was "very responsible given the numerous issues raised" and ramifications of regulating carbon dioxide.