Cattail Pulp

This is particularly encouraging news. That cattail fiber is been actively exploited and proven out in commercial practice was actually unexpected. The prior literature was showing a slow emergence of any interest in the product.

We have already covered the viability as a food and ethanol feedstock for industry. This is a bonus that needs investigating.

Nothing is said of the actual manufacturing process, but the additional item suggests that extracting ordinary fiber is not very easy. In the event, they produce a batter that is then molded. Sounds pretty straight forward.

Since I am anticipating an emerging cattail industry, having additional markets for the byproducts is invaluable. It would be much more satisfying to produce cattail pulp from the boreal forest if only because it is an annual cycle rather than a multi decadal cycle.

Santa Barbara’s Be Green Harvests Cattails for Packaging
Biodegradable But Here to Stay

Thursday, October 30, 2008

By Martha Sadler

Overpackaging has been a curse word in eco circles since the ’60s, but retailers’ prime directive of luring customers and protecting products with gleaming, durable plastic is not resisted easily.
So it’s safe to say that Be Green Packaging, a two-year-old company with downtown Santa Barbara headquarters, is a significant player in the rush toward eco-conscious packaging. Just this month, Be Green Packaging struck a deal to supply containers for salad bars at every Ralphs supermarket throughout Southern California. The company has been supplying salad containers to Whole Foods Markets worldwide since May 2007.

Founded by Ron Blitzer, who also cofounded Bank of Santa Barbara, and his venture capitalist partner Robert Richman, Be Green makes fully compostable packaging out of bulrushes — Typha orientalis, commonly known as cattails. Compared to molded foam, which can take a thousand years to biodegrade, or most plastics, which never disintegrate, the bulrush containers take just 20-90 days to return to the soil, claimed Megan Havrda, Be Green’s eco-adviser and marketing director.

Blitzer and company like the cattails because they grow quickly and voluntarily. They can be harvested without having to be planted or cultivated. They simply are collected, according to Havrda, from hillsides in China’s Manchuria region, near where the company’s factories are located. They are not taken from marshes or waterways, Havrda said, which might harm those ecosystems, but from the hillsides above the water. Besides interfering minimally with the natural environment, Blitzer noted, this style of harvesting, called “wildcrafting,” does not replace food crop space.

Although pulp factories are major polluters, Blitzer said, “Ours in China is state-of-the-art.”

The containers are unbleached and nontoxic. Havrda said that less than 50 parts per million of an FDA-approved moisure and grease barrier, DuPont's Zonal, is mixed into the bulrush batter before it is molded into form. Although pulp factories are major polluters, Blitzer said, “Ours in China is state-of-the-art.” The containers are freezer- and microwave-safe.

Because Ralphs, like most supermarkets, wants clear plastic tops for the salad containers primarily to prevent people from smuggling more expensive items out of the store inside the salad container. Be Green contracts Oxnard’s Coolpak for tops made of recyclable plastic. (While biodegradable plastics do exist, the FDA does not allow their use as food containers.) Coolpak, which supplies Trader Joe’s, is working on converting that chain to biodegradable containers for its highly packaged vegetables and fruits, Havrda claimed.

Although Whole Foods customers might be expected to shell out a little more for sustainable containers, most supermarkets might not: The containers have to be priced competitively, and one of the things that makes them so - besides fluctuating oil prices is that they can be transported more efficiently. Four of Be Green’s meat trays, for example, take up the space of a single foam meat tray.

The company’s principals are an interesting mix of eco-evangelists and hard-nosed business types. Richman, the venture capitalist, has “brokered amazing deals in many industries; he just has an incredible sense for businesses that can grow exponentially,” Havrda explained. Havrda herself has impressive environmental credentials. She has guided backpacking tours, served as development director for Women’s Economic Ventures, and lived in the sustainable township of Auroville, on the Bay of Bengal in India. She also helped UCSB archaeologist Anabel Ford create a reserve and surrounding development at the site of the Maya city of El Pilar. For the last several years, Havrda has owned her own land development companion — three of them, actually specializing in green building and inner-city revitalization.

Blitzer, who moved to Santa Barbara in 2001, has made a lucrative career of manufacturing and marketing plastic products. Until recently, he owned Nation’s Plastics, a private company whose clients include Starbucks. Be Green began as Blitzer’s vision, primarily: “I decided I wanted my legacy not to be polluting the planet,” Blitzer said.

Since beginning this business, Blitzer and Richman have traded in their gas-guzzlers for hybrids. Their business cards are printed with soy ink and they drink from green-certified beverage bottles instead of paper cups. With business so booming, one must wonder what would happen if Be Green runs out of bulrushes. Havrda doesn’t see that happening. “Bulrushes grow across the entire Western Hemisphere, too. There is no shortage, and if there ever were, we’re flexible and savvy enough that we could use another fiber.”


This second item gives us a little insight of the difficulties involved.

Researcher
Songsak Somchak, Silpachai Sri-Uthai, Natthaporn Chumsamui, Asst.Prof.Surchai Bavornsethanan

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Tel. 0-2470-9124 Fax 0-2470-9111

Rationale

Narrow-leaf cattail is a kind of weed growing in marsh, swamp and wild and deserted areas. It is easy to find and is a short-lived plant that lives for several years. Apart from its use in wicker, it has been found that narrow-leaf cattail contain cellulose fibers which can be separated and spun to produce yarns and woven into a fabric. This fabric can replace linen, cotton, and synthetic fabric. This would be a way of making the most of natural resources and could reduce importation of raw material yarns and fabrics from abroad. To separate fiber form the leaf, chemicals are used to remove the peel covering the fiber to leave only the fiber. Then the fiber will be separated by a needle. By this method the fiber obtained is not very strong due to its exposure to chemicals. Besides, this fiber separation process is slow; it takes a long time and the cost of fiber extraction is high.

Our study indicates that the fiber of cattail is inside the leaves. It is impossible to rasp the outer surface the separate the fiber as the surface of cattail leaves is delicate and breaks easily. As for the methods of peeling it by hand and extracting fiber with a needle, it takes a lot of time and money. The conclusion for the design is to cut the leaves vertically in two pieces, thus opening the surface for fiber extraction. The cut leaves are conveyed to the fiber carding set, which consists of rollers for gathering the fiber. There are several sets of rolling brushes moving at different speed. Apart from gathering fiber, they also serve as a conveyor. The carding brushes have been designed specifically so that the fiber left on the brushes can be easily removed after carding. Most importantly, the processes must be synchronized and can run uninterruptedly.

Application

A comparative study has been conducted between hand carding and machine carding. The result is that for the same amount of time, machine carding yields more productivity than hand carding and less damage is found on the fiber. So, this machine is a prototype.

2012 Mythology Rising

For some time the prophetic mythos of the 2012 winter solstice has been talked up by those that get excited about such things. An excellent review is available at this website and is worth a read.

http://www.adishakti.org/mayan_end_times_prophecy_12-21-2012.htm

That the Mayan tradition labels it a transition time has the earmark of a religious system of thought that designates certain dates as more important than others. This is not a simple annualized affair but wound out over the years and lifetimes of the citizen and clearly greater than themselves since they could see it all in the placement of the stars.

Stonehenge is telling us the same story or at least suggesting the same thing. This all supports a global Bronze Age religious cult that was linked to observation of the skies and in the case of the Maya, an effective numeration system that allowed then to count the years and link it to observations of the night sky.

For no other obvious good reason the solstice of 2012 is a Mayan calendar transition date. The difficulty is that this is far too good a story for the press to leave alone. So we can expect a lot of media reaction as we close in on that particular date. You can be sure that you will be hearing too much about it. So read this material in the website to get a fairly unbiased understanding of the tale before it all gets buried under a more hysterical mountain of commentary.

It has been clear to me for a long time that the two thousand year Bronze Age was an age of wealthy lordlings scattered through out the globe who had limited ability to actually project force. Their wealth was preserved in copper that required their economic clout to sustain its mining and trade.

The collapse of Atlantis at Gibraltar crippled and actually ended this economy on the Atlantic seaboard although it continued on for a while longer in Southeast Asia.

The point of all this is that echoes of this culture is embedded in our oldest works and can be recognized. What makes it all so compelling is that as we add knowledge we often find suggestive correlations that should not be there in the first place and are left with the uneasy feeling that they actually may have known things that they surely had no right to know.

There is just enough out there to warm up the conspiracy theorists and the like. It is not hard to construct a convincing line of hooey that will keep everyone awake at night.

We have no reason to think that the Mayan choice of dates had any particular significance. We do understand that their culture emerged in response to the European Bronze Age in particular and staggered on thereafter until increasing renewal of European and Asian contact let loose a series of pandemics a couple of centuries before the voyages of Columbus. At least I propose that as a viable working hypothesis that has been supported by ongoing discoveries but may never be completely provable.

It is one of those situations in which we are going to keep finding the remains until the evidence is impossible to deny. When I build these particular hypotheses about prehistory I rely on one operating principle. If they could have done it, they certainly did. I have yet to be disappointed.

As an example, during the middle ages, European fishermen could get blown out to sea and end up on the American coast or in the Caribbean. We are doing it today in row boats. This would allow disease transmission. Did the Europeans fish? Case closed.

Archeology has tried to put up roadblocks to such ideas and has been called on it over and over again. Trust the adventurous horny young men to go anywhere and get themselves killed or lost. The latest such effort came regarding the resistance to the idea that North America was peopled along the Northwest Coast. This was obvious to me twenty years ago before some brave soul suggested it. The objections are now fading as the evidence is been found and it turns out that the coastals on the Asian side used kayaks and had the best developed arms ever recorded.

The only rule that should be followed by archeology is that if it was possible why did it not happen? Who was able to stop it?

Imagine a group of European seamen cast ashore on the Guinea Coast in the fifteenth century? What evidence would we have of their existence or even their brief survival? That is the harsh rule of the ancient world, but people did survive and make it and did leave traces.

Meteorite Blast Pattern

I am posting this interesting article on the famous Arizona meteorite crater that has been used as an example in just about every book on geology. What makes it interesting is the detailed description of the blast event as it has been reconstructed. We have little of the object actually buried in the crust. Rather we have a destruction and blast pattern largely released outside of the crater itself that distributed fine molten particle many miles in all directions.

This scenario finds comparables in India, the Sahara Desert and elsewhere that had been preciously been identified but lacked a credible explanation, unless you call up a prehistoric atomic war. The idea that even a nickel iron meteorite could largely vaporize seems unlikely but must be considered. I expect that the effect is related to mass and initial speed of impact with the atmosphere.

This was still a small meteorite compared to what is possible and what we never wish to experience. I often wonder if the major hot spots on Earth were all triggered by massive impacts that were able to penetrate the crust and even perhaps crack it. Iceland is my favorite since our explanation there is based on the idea of diverging crustal spreading that has caused the hot spot. What if it is the other way around? Not too likely, but proving one or the other is not easy.

Then we have the giant Volcanoes. What got them brewing up? A deep penetrating asteroid would work fine. Let us hope we never get to find out.

This returns me back to the extraordinary event of histories greatest bullseye, the meteorite strike that triggered the crustal shift of the Pleistocene nonconformity. That meteorite struck the North Pole from probably the same direction in the sky as the Arizona Meteorite, except that it was perhaps a hundred miles off center from the pole so as to impart its kinetic energy as completely as possible to the crust. A very minimal shift if any in direction off the solar plane would put it on target.

The blast itself was initially contained within the mile thick ice which was lofted ice and debris into the Ohio valley and the Carolinas. The heat blast scoured Eastern North America. All this is credible in light of this article describing the Arizona blast. As a first guess, I think that we are looking at an event about ten to fifty times more powerful that the 20 megatons attributed to the meteorite in Arizona. That suggests that the meteorite was a million ton baby.

That suggests that there exists somewhere a remnant of perhaps half that or even a lot less out in the Canadian Diamond fields. The problem of course is that is not really a lot of material. It is two days work in our largest copper mines. Our best hope is to find tracers on the ground and try to map an epicenter.

This also suggests that the resultant impact crater may be much smaller than expected. The ice was impacted by the blast front and its energy transmitted into the crust but a lot less violently than from a straight rock on crust impact. I am much more comfortable about the survivability of this event outside of Eastern North America.

THE METEOR CRATER METEORITE

The original article can be found at this web site with a several illustrations but no attribution.

http://sped2work.tripod.com/meteroite.html

Fifty thousand years ago a huge boulder crashed into the desert flatlands in what is now Arizona leaving behind a bowl-shaped hole 4,000 feet wide and 570 feet deep. A study published in the journal Science concludes the stone that came in from space that day was a nickel iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and weighing 60,000 tons, traveling at speed of almost 45,000 miles an hour.

The question is, what ever happened to it? For years people have searched for the main body of the meteor, but it has never been found. The largest piece ever located is the so called Holsinger Meteroite, below, found within the crater, and weighing 1440 pounds. That from an original 60,000 ton bolide.

The collision erupted with the force of a 20 megaton bomb and sprayed molten rock for miles around the crater, says Elisabetta Pierazzo, a researcher at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and co-author of the journal study on the impact.

Pierazzo and her co-authors, researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Rhode Island, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Australian National University in Canberra, used math models and chemical analysis of pieces of the space boulder to determine that about 85 percent of the meteor melted upon contact. Only the BACK 15 percent of the 100-foot space rock remained free from the melting process. Instead it broke into bits and ended up strewn all over a five mile radius in every direction from the center of the impact site, leaving what have now come to be called Canyon Diablo meteorites.

The melted portion turned into grain-size particles called spheroids that were spread even farther and wider. Only a small bit of the spheroids and bits of unmelted meteor have ever been found.

At the time of the impact animals such as mammoths, sloths, bison, and camels roamed leisurely amongst the rolling hills and woodlands, while giant twenty-foot-plus wingspan Teratorns roamed the skys above the yet to be named Colorado Plateau where the meteor landed. But the meteorite that slammed into the ground that day 50,000 years ago instantly changed everything for miles around. Casualties resulting from vaporization, burial by the ejected bedrock, and from the destructive air blast moving outward and across the landscape would have been devastating. Winds approaching 2000 miles per hour would have rushed unhindered across the flat landscape for two to five miles beyond the center of the impact, with hurricane force winds substained as far away as twenty-four miles. Vegetation would have been completely destroyed for up to 900 square miles, with damage over an additional 400 square miles. Large animals as far away as three miles would have been killed flatout and those as far as fifteen miles away would have sustained crippling injuries. Vaporized iron would have filled the air and hunks of hot metal would have been falling from the sky in a five-mile plus radius. Then nothing.

Since the coming of man, hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of the meteor, ranging from a few grams to a couple hundred pounds, have been found and picked up from the so-called Canyon Diablo scatter field around the impact site. Up to this time no reliable estimate of the total overall weight found thus far, or for the estimated amount of remaining pieces, has been forthcomimg. Meteorite hunter Dr. Harvey Harlow Nininger, a well-respected student of things-meteor, has estimated that about 30 tons of specimens had been collected. Workers have estimated that 8,000 tons of iron are contained in the fine grained material around the crater. This leaves about 55,000 tons to speculate about. Some of it remains buried as drilling in the crater for the main bolide has shown. Some of it remains in the form of specimens in area surrounding the crater. Until the area was closed to meteorite hunting recently, hunters with metal detectors were still finding significant pieces. However, as stated above by Pierazzo, et al, 85 percent, 51,000 tons, the vast majority of the impacting body creating the crater, vaporized. It instantly turned from a solid nickel and iron rock into a gas, creating a cloud of super heated vapor riding the crest of the 2000 mile per hour winds, only to cool and condensed and rain nickel and iron spheroids down upon hundereds of square miles in every direction. True, probably not as grandiose as a single, huge thirty ton boulder from space buried or sitting there, but that's where the answer to the "What Happened to the Meteorite?" question stands now.

References had been made of the crater by members of the indigenous population from very early on, even to the point of using pieces of the meteor for ceremonial and ritual purposes as cited below. The first written report pertaining to the crater was not made until about 1871 by a man named Albert Franklin Banta, known then as Charley Franklin, who served as a scout and guide for the U.S. Army and worked for a short time at Bosque Redondo while the Navajos and Apaches were interned there following The Long Walk. However, indigenous population or discovered in 1871, the question not fully resolved even to this day is JUST when was the coming of man to the Arizona plain AND could humans been around to have actually observed the the meteor's impact? The prevailing thought is man showed up just about the time the ice sheets began retreating, somewhere in the 12,000 years ago range (Clovis Culture). The meteor impact has been dated at some 50,000 years back, so it would seem highly unlikely if one were to use the above impact date and human arrival date that anyone would have been around to observe the event. However, there has been some very credible evidence recently that seems to indicate humans did infact inhabit the area much earlier than previously thought.

In 1979 a small cave was discovered in a remote section of southern New Mexico that seemed to indicate it had been used as shelter by very early inhabitants. By 1989 it had been visited by archeologists and by 1990 excavations were being carried out at the site. It had even been given a name, Pendejo Cave. There is some evidence of human modification of animal bones from among artifacts retreived from archeologic zones predating Clovis. The finds indicate manufacture of bone tools, ornaments, and marrowing. They come from well-defined and dated layers, ranging from circa 13,000 to 50,000 YBP (years before present).

Native Americans inhabiting the desert southwest in a more generally accepted timeframe, have for centuries made note of a variety of celestial events, from the Chaco Canyon Sun Dagger solstice device to the petrograph recording of the super nova burst dated at 1054 AD. They have also have a tradition for treating meteors and their meteorite remnants with a certain degree of reverence.

The so-called Camp Verde and Bloody Basin meteorites are transported specimens from the Meteor Crater impact site. Both were carried some sixty to eighty miles southwest of the crater. The Camp Verde meteorite, which weighs over one-hundred and thirty pounds, was found on top of a mesa in the corner of an ancient dwelling. The meteorite had been wrapped in feather and cloth and placed on a stone alter.

The Bloody Basin meteorite, which weighs over twelve pounds, was found in connection to a burial site. In another example, roughly thirty-five miles to the west-northwest of the Meteor Crater impact site along old Route 66 is the little town of Winona. In 1928, about five miles northeast of Winona, near an ancient Sinagua Indian village called Elden Pueblo that had been inhabited from about 1070 to 1275 A.D., a fifty-three pound meteorite now called the Winona Meteorite was discovered carefully buried in a stone cist. The manner in which the meteorite was buried suggests that the pueblo builders most likely considered the meteorite a sacred object --- possibly after witnessing its fall. The meteorite was an egg-shaped mass when discovered. However, even though the Indians were apparently able to move it to the burial site, it fell to pieces upon removal.

With such a spectacular nature-altering event as the impact at Meteor Crater one would think any surviving human inhabitants of the region would surely have been moved to record it in some manner. As of yet no such recording has been forthcoming.

Carbon Dioxide Pollution Increases Sharply

Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions have been pathetic to date, although that should not come as a surprise. We have to replace all our energy protocols while our global economy is growing. That is impossible without suffering an expansion of CO2 for some time yet.

The global economy will double in size over the next twenty years. Read my lips. That means that we will need twice as much fuel as we are using today whatever it looks like. That means that if we wish to take a 600 MW coal powered power plant off line, we have to replace it with two 600 MW power plants.

You would not be too far wrong to suggest that a lot of the ideas out there are simply pissing in the wind. We have major fossil fuel supplies coming on stream, but they are only going to cushion the shock of change. There are after all only two trillion barrel reservoirs of heavy oil in the world. Canada has one and Hugo has the other.

If we produce the tarsands at the rate of 100 million barrels per day, they will last the world a couple of centuries or so.

To replace them we need solar energy to produce electrical power to support a fast shift over to electric transportation.

Even better we produce biological fuels such as ethanol using cattails and algae.

These all call for the mobilization of a large portion of humanity into the business of producing feed stocks for fuel manufacture.

Starting all this now would be a great idea.

Global Warming Pollution On The Increase

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said.

The new numbers, called “scary” by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That’s an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, it puts the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And while several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more.

Still, it was large increases in China, India and other developing countries that spurred the growth of carbon dioxide pollution to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon. Figures released by science agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Australia show that China’s added emissions accounted for more than half of the worldwide increase. China passed the United States as the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter in 2006.

Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon.

“ Things are happening very, very fast,” said Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey. “It’s scary.

Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said he was surprised at the results because he thought world emissions would drop because of the economic downturn. That didn’t happen.

“ If we’re going to do something (about reducing emissions), it’s got to be different than what we’re doing,” he said.

The emissions are based on data from oil giant BP PLC, which show that China has become the major driver of world trends. China emitted 2 billion tons of carbon last year, up 7.5 percent from the previous year.

“ We’re shipping jobs offshore from the U.S., but we’re also shipping carbon dioxide emissions with them,” Marland said. “China is making fertilizer and cement and steel and all of those are heavy energy-intensive industries.”

Developing countries not asked to reduce greenhouse gases by the 1997 Kyoto treaty - and China and India are among them - now account for 53 percent of carbon dioxide pollution. That group of nations surpassed industrialized ones in carbon dioxide emissions in 2005, a new analysis of older figures shows.

India is in position to beat Russia for the No. 3 carbon dioxide polluter behind the United States, Marland said. Indonesia levels are increasing rapidly.

Denmark’s emissions dropped 8 percent. The United Kingdom and Germany reduced carbon dioxide pollution by 3 percent, while France and Australia cut it by 2 percent.

Nature can’t keep up with the carbon dioxide from man, Le Quere said. She said from 1955 to 2000, the forests and oceans absorbed about 57 percent of the excess carbon dioxide, but now it’s 54 percent.

What is “kind of scary” is that the worldwide emissions growth is beyond the highest growth in fossil fuel predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Under the panel’s scenario then, temperatures would increase by somewhere between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

If this trend continues for the century, “you’d have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic,” said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider.

Making Biochar

It has been very encouraging to watch the expansion of interest in the subject of biochar over the past eighteen months. When I first tripped over the subject in June 2007, the primary forum on the subject went the odd day without a post. I introduced the material to Jerry Pournelle’s site at www.pournelle.com that month and the forum immediately got very active. It also helped attract the first readers to my blog for which I am grateful.

I now receive thirty to forty postings from the forum every day and I have an unbelievable 6000 such postings that I have not found the time to read in my terra preta archive to say nothing of the thousand or so that I have read. It is obvious now that folks are working with the concepts everywhere today on every continent and in every likely environment. Real farmers and real household gardeners are trying out the ideas in their own back yards.

Some very important questions have been answered. It is possible to tackle alkaline and saline soils with this protocol successfully. I thought it likely a year ago but we are getting confirmation. It is not simple but it appears that the conditioning of the soil with char allows the soil to become fertile inside of about two years. It apparently takes a growing season for the soil to be reformed after which you have what you need.

I also pointed out the utility of using seed hills in the early implementation of the biochar protocol. This allows effort to be concentrated on twenty five percent or less of the land in the early stages.

There is little apparent dispute that the working mechanism is that the carbon binds soluble nutrients in place until a root or other biological agent arrives to acquire them. This hugely lowers the need to fertilize the soils as the current massive wastage into the groundwater is hugely reduced if not almost eliminated. This is, by the way, a huge breakthrough in soil husbandry and will be rapidly accepted once it is presented this way.

The other big issue is how to make the stuff. I have introduced ideas on how the originators did it and have investigated a number of more modern systems. The interesting question is how a home gardener or an experimenter can produce a good quality biochar.

The first issue that must be tackled is the feedstock. The whole charcoal industry has predisposed thinking toward using wood. This turns out to be a bad idea. The finer the end product the better, and all wood will give is a coarse product that will be in your soil for generations. Some minor wood will not be harmful, but the majority of the feedstock needs to be non woody plant waste, well dried. Charring will reduce the weight by about eighty percent or less depending on your ability to manage air flow.

Obviously some form of commercial charcoaler will give you a better yield and perhaps a more consistent product. If you do not mind a little work, make a collar out of sheet metal in the form of a ring like a drum that can be set out in the middle of your garden or field. To allow some air flow in through the bottom, place thin branches under the edges. This will need to be experimented with. Load this ring which may be two or three feet high and perhaps four feet across, with a well packed charge of feed stock. Corn stover is certainly the most convenient and I am certain is the original feedstock in Brazil. But any available material will do, particularly for an experiment.

It then needs to be capped. A layer of soil is probably the best option, since it can be topped up whenever a breakthrough occurs. Also it is easy to leave an initial opening in the center to place the fire charge. Once the fire charge is set on top of the load, it can be capped of with a metal garbage can lid.

After all that, it is left to practice and experience to get the best result. It will take hours to completely burn through the whole load and it is likely some of the charge will not be charred at all. No harm however, as it is expedient once the fire is out the next day or so to lift off the ring and blend the biochar and capping soil and any unburnt feedstock into a homogenous product.

This should give any gardener ample material to work with particularly if he employs hills formed with a shovel full of this blend.

If you are really keen, you can review my posts from last year on the making of a corn stover earthen kiln. That is for a field of corn and a few willing backs and I believe is how the Indios made the large fields in the first place after it was first discovered as a result of backyard midden piles.

Anyway, this is as minimalist as I can make it, although an earthen wall and a stove pipe to allow air into the bottom may work well also. That can be a pit with the same stove pipe at work and that emulates some rough charcoal making where efficiency does not matter much, since they lacked the stove pipe.

I would not recommend at this time applying this method in large operations simply because the smoke and unburned gases would likely be huge. Practice may prove otherwise and assuming that a closed modern system is obviously better may well be wrong.

This should help anyone anywhere experiment with biochar, particularly where subsistence farming is practiced and the only tools available are usually strong backs.

Can Biochar Paint the World Green?

I add this recent item on Biochar. This will refresh your knowledge on the subject. I have covered it extensively over the past year or so and it is always nice to see another good survey story.

The principle reason this flies is that in the face of the developed world’s regulatory environment and the clear lack of patentability, most protocols like this run into an irresistible headwind. Familiarity with the literature on zeolites and thence solid crystalline acids immediately suggests the use of activated carbon as a soil additive. It certainly did to me yet I backed off for the above reasons.

Because the Amazonian Indios have conducted a field test over thousands of years, the need for extensive field tests just to show feasibility evaporates and we can now study the effects of thousands of years of such practices on such soils.

Thus concern over scientific acceptance may make you look wise but science in the field makes you look like the guy sitting on the cure for cancer.

Can charcoal paint the world green?

A look at the promising future of biochar

by Myles Estey

October 31, 2008

Amidst growing documentation of global warming and its dangers, a simple method of carbon sequestration has been quietly demonstrating potential to play an integral role in the fight against climate change.

Far from the spectacular engineering of most sequestration methods or industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) capture systems, focus instead lies on very simple ingredients: waste organic matter, a kiln and chunks of charcoal. Interest in how this can not only fight climate change, but also soil degradation, soil toxicity and poor crop yields, continues to build rapidly around the world.

This is not your average charcoal. Originally called Terra Preta de Indio (Amazonian Dark Earth, after its region of origin), researchers today tend towards the term “biochar.” The char product derives from a special burning process called pyrolysis, where organic matter is burned in the absence of oxygen at a temperature between 300 and 600 degrees Celsius. Wood chips, crop residues, manure, food wastes: any and all forms of organic matter can be combusted through pyrolysis to similar results.

The anaerobic nature of this burning partially prevents the release of carbon as a gas, instead leaving a residual char that is extremely rich in carbon: the biochar. The differentiating feature in the two breakdown processes is simple.

Typical combustion of organic matter (burning, incineration), releases nearly all of the carbon as carbon dioxide (CO2) the gas which scientists increasingly identify as the root of the climate change problem. Similarly, when organic materials are left to break down naturally, these same products will release methane, a gas with 21 times more global warming potential (GWP) than CO2 which again fuels the climate change feedback loop. Pyrolysis burning ensures much of the carbon stays as a solid, thus not releasing it into the atmosphere as a gas.

The pyrolysis kilns – which can range from the size of a fist to an industrial facility - have yet another added feature that help mitigate the effects of climate change. Many are designed to harness the heat of the kiln to assist in generating the facility where they are stationed. In other words, while biomass gets treated in a carbon-responsible manner, it simultaneously diminishes the need to draw more power from the grid, which has associated emissions of its own, an added step of efficiency.

Within the actual pyrolysis process, instead of emitting the majority of carbon as gas, the nature of the anaerobic burning permits roughly 50 per cent of the carbon in the combusted product to end up as the carbon-rich biochar. The promising aspect here is that carbon is stable in this state. It can be buried safely in the ground, where it breaks down on the scale of hundreds to thousands of years, boosting soil health while doing so.

As Cornell professor Johannes Lehman – among the more prolific and respected researchers on the topic – writes in the article “Bio-energy in the Black”, the buried biochar has two main attractive features: “a high stability against decay and [a] superior ability to retain nutrients as compared to other forms of soil matter.” This means that as the carbon breaks down in the ground, it makes positive contributions to the soil health. Initial research has shown definitive potential for the char to boost crop yields, reduce soil degradation and offset the presence of dangerous chemicals that have ended up in soil - all fairly high accolades for little pieces of charcoal.

Despite the promising functions of biochar, research on the modern applications of biochar remains in the embryonic phase. To date, all that has been determined is there is enough potential for biochar to warrant further study. Initial observations of how well char has acted when put in soil, and how safe the char is as a carbon storage mechanism, has been a major boon to the burgeoning interest in the topic. Similarly positive results yielded from climate models calculating the extent to which pyrolysis methods of combusting biomass can prevent the release of CO2 into the atmosphere are further propping up interest in pursuing the practice.

With optimistic initial findings, claims have emerged that state even modest application of biochar systems could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent, that biochar will be the wedge to avert climate change disaster or that biochar will help arrest the onslaught of desertification and topsoil depletion.

Professor Lehman, though himself an ardent believer in the worth of biochar, is insistent that much more research needs to be done to determine exactly what role biochar can play in helping society work towards a healthier planet before definitive claims can be made.

“We need to evaluate the biochar potential at the scale that it needs to be implemented, with solid accompaniment by research to evaluate both its benefits and potential problems,” explains Lehmann. He adds with some chagrin that the money needed to move forward is a drop in the bucket compared to U.S. research money backing biofuel and other carbon sequestration projects.

“I think the technology is at our fingertips,” Lehmann furthers, “if we could just get a few million [in funding] it would make a huge contribution to our understanding.”

Beyond understanding how it will all work scientifically on the larger scale, more also must be done to understand how biochar can work from an economic and policy standpoint. No matter how ecologically beneficial biochar may prove to be, it will go nowhere without industry backing.

Peter Fransham - the Vice President of Technology at Advanced BioRefinery Inc. (ABRI), an Ottawa-based company that works with pyrolysis - is well aware of this. Peter has the unique position of having worked in the small industry for 20 years, a veritable eternity in this young field. Even today, ABRI remains one of only four or five Canadian companies dealing with pyrolysis or biochar.

Fransham believes any decisions to invest in biochar will come down to simple cost analysis: will it bring sufficient financial benefit to those who use it? He offers the sample question of “what is the increase in yields that one will obtain from putting [char] into the field, and how long is the payback for that [individual]?” Being able to answer this question accurately will be crucial to biochar’s direction from here.

“At this point, we don’t really have the numbers to say what the payback is going to be. And that’s where the academic community comes in, to help determine these rates,” Fransham adds. “Can we put this in at this rate, and have this improvement, and generate a positive rate of return for the farmer?” Accurate answers to this question still hang in the balance, and Fransham underlines that determining actual dollar figures on the costs and benefits will be a prerequisite for an industry to grow around the technology.

These steps are being taken, however slowly, and far removed from the limelight. ABRI’s understanding of how the biochar process can work continues to develop in concert with others around the world. Joint research projects in both Canada and the U.S. continue to fuel ABRI with more information about how their two main biomass interests - poultry manure and wood chips - can be reduced through pyrolysis, and used as a marketable product.

Positives outweigh the negatives for Fransham and his company these days, but as he says of any long term success, “biochar has to prove this is something we have to do today, as well as in the future” in order to really flourish.

Lehmann and the academic community around biochar are hoping to do just this. Far more so than Fransham, Lehmann speaks with excitement of the potential for biochar not as a business, but as a means to fight climate change, boost crop yields and enrich soil quality. And it is in these latter three points that most of Lehmann’s work focuses, hoping to find that we may have a way to help us steer off our crash course to a climatic disaster.

However, Lehmann speaks firmly on the fact that biochar will never be the sole answer to curbing global warming. Such a goal, he reminds, will only be realized by reducing the high dependence on GHG-producing energy we see today. He cautions that it is an illusion to think that biochar is a magic solution, instead emphasizing that it can “play a significant role in a portfolio of options” to fight climate change, if done properly. He adds, “it may be the only option that we have right now, today, that can actually have a net withdrawal of CO2 from the atmosphere in a safe and environmentally conscious way.”

This, of course, is hugely important news for anyone even remotely concerned with our planet’s health.

The fact that biochar can conceivably remove CO2 from the atmosphere and make an end product that has its own set of benefits is certainly compelling, to say the least, and more than worthy of the research Lehmann, Fransham and their peers advocate.

If it is even half of what some have predicted, everything from timber mills in the Canadian north, to Australian farms plagued by arid ground, to African villages that rely on dangerous or inefficient combusting methods, to mega-farms in the American northwest could be reaping the benefits of biochar and revolutionizing how we deal with our organic waste. And all the while bringing our atmospheric CO2 to more stable levels.

If research heads in the direction many are hoping it will, there may be a chance yet for charcoal to do something few would have ever guessed of it: make our world a greener place.

Vanadium Market

I add this quick note on the scale of the Vanadium market itself. It is a market that no one has ever cared much about. However the potential of the Vanadium Redox battery is such that it must impact this market at the scale of this market. Imagine every square meter of solar energy production needing a pound of vanadium storage.

I do not know the actual numbers and it is not yet worth digging up and calculating, but the reports are suggestive and the pound per meter figure is likely close enough.

However we want to calculate it all, the result is the same. An exponential increase in solar demand over the next decade will quickly swallow the supply.

Wind power also needs this form of storage as does any intermittent source.

Global Vanadium Market to Exceed 130 Thousand Metric Tons by 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Riding on increasing steel output, global demand for vanadium is on the rise. Growth in demand is also due to an increasing trend towards micro alloying of steel. Global vanadium market is projected to reach 130.2 thousand metric tons by 2015.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) October 29, 2008 -- Metallurgical application, particularly steel manufacture, represents the largest end-use market for vanadium. Vanadium market is expected to follow the cyclical nature of the steel industry and new applications in other industries are likely to drive demand for vanadium. Europe and Asia-Pacific account for a over 60% of the global vanadium market, as stated by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Steel manufacturing represents the largest end use market for vanadium, accounting for a share of over 87% of the total vanadium sale worldwide. Global demand for vanadium is projected to continue, with Chinese steel consumption not showing ant signs of an immediate slowing down. Added to that, steel output and consumption in other emerging markets is also increasing at a rapid pace. Currently, Europe stands to be the largest vanadium market in the world, with a share of over 32%. However, Asia-Pacific is all set to be the major consumer of vanadium in the near future. Vanadium consumption in Asia-Pacific is expected to be over 36 thousand metric tons by 2012, making the region the largest consumer of the metal.

Some of the applications of vanadium-based products that are under development could have a positive effect on demand for the metal. Select applications under development include vanadium steels for high-speed, high-energy autogenous welding, vanadium steels in electric power generating units to facilitate cost-effective power generation and to enhance the efficiency, vanadium redox flow battery for large scale energy storage systems, vanadium alloys for compressors of aero-engine gas turbines and vanadium high carbon grey cast irons for drums and brake discs.

Leading global and regional players operating in the market include Chengde Xinxin Vanadium and Titanium Co, Evraz Group, Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corp, Strategic Minerals Corporation, Stratcor Inc., OAO Chusovoy Metallurgical Works, McKenzie Bay International Ltd., Nippon Denko Co, Panzhihua Iron and Steel Group, Shieldalloy Metallurgical Corporation, Treibacher Industries AG, Vanadium Tula, Windimurra Vanadium Limited and Xstrata Plc.

The report titled "Vanadium: A Global Strategic Business Report" published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, drivers, product profile, players, competition, end-use applications, recent developments, mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic industry activities. Analysis is presented for major geographic markets including North America, Japan, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, Russia, Asia-Pacific and South Africa for the period 1991-2015. Analytics are provided in terms of end-use segments including Steel (Carbon Steel, Stainless & Heat Resisting Steel, Full Alloy Steel, High-Strength Low-Alloy Steel, Tool Steel, and Others), Cast Irons, Super alloys, Alloys, Chemical & Ceramic Uses (Catalysts and Pigments), and Others.

For more details about this research report, please visit

http://www.strategyr.com/Vanadium_Market_Report.asp.

Svenmark Cosmic Ray Experiment

I have just come across this item from last year but it must be considered. It has been demonstrated in lab conditions that ambient cosmic ray flux generates the precursors for cloud formation. We get no sense from this as yet regarding what percentage this represents of the cloud cover.

We learn that the combining of water and sulphuric acid is a necessary precursor to cloud formation and that liberation of electrons by cosmic rays drives the process or at least that is the reasonable inference.

At least we can also now link pollution to its potential climatic effects a little better.

Assuming that variation in the sun’s activity level affects Earth’s Magnetic field we have a natural force multiplier that needs to be properly mapped and whose effects need to be modeled and confirmed if that is ever possible.

I share Nigel’s frustration with the state of scientific literacy in the press.

When I began this blog, I commented that I expected the proponents of the CO2 – Global Warming linkage hypothesis to be made fools of by Mother Nature. Both phenomena are very important and demand responses. The problem was always in the linkage idea. It was simply the introduction of an unnecessary extra theory that could cause problems for the real issues. And it was not necassary.

The linkage hypothesis has been dust for ten years and we are now facing major indicators pointing the other way.



February 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged


When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latter day Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicized in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heat waves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

Bottom of Form

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That leveling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

Scientists Confirm Global Warming at Both Poles

Well, they got their headline. How data taken solely from coastal areas can be either consistent or conclusive is beyond me. A decadal alteration in oceanic wind patterns will generate wonderful trends and say absolutely nothing about the average temperature of the continent itself.

The bottom line in all this and clearly spelled out in this report is that no one is doing a proper job of determining what is going on over the Antarctic as a whole.

Yet I for one would like to know. The reason is that the center of the continent should have the least variation on a year to year basis of ant place on Earth. That means that we can measure the gross heat and follow how it is affected by any incoming heat.

In simple terms, if the temperature of the globe has changed by half a degree then it should show up as at a far higher resolution here than anywhere else.

Scientists Confirm Global Warming at North and South Poles

By Jessica Berman

Washington30 October 2008

Scientists have created a climate model that they say proves human activity is responsible for global warming not only at the North Pole, but at the South Pole as well. The model includes data from Antarctica about which relatively little is known. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

While studies are reasonably clear on the role of carbon emissions by humans in causing global warming in the Arctic, less is know about the causes of warming in Antarctica because of its remoteness.

Some experts believe it is due to greenhouse gases while others believe changes in the Antarctic landscape are due to natural fluctuations in climate.

In a study in this week's issue of Nature Geoscience, an international team of scientists reports on the results of a new model they say proves the human footprint in global warming in the Antarctic.

The model incorporates 100 years worth of temperature data from the Arctic and about 50 years of recorded temperatures from stations in Antarctica.

The temperatures in the Antarctic were gathered along the coastal areas, according to scientists, because it is too difficult to get to the continent's interior.

When the temperature data from both continents were plugged into the model, scientists say it clearly showed the human effects of global warming in the South Pole.

Andrew Monaghan is with the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He wrote the News and Views article in Nature.

"That's why this study is so important because it formally demonstrates the human contribution to [global warming] for the first time," he said.

In a teleconference with reporters, Monaghan said substantial warming has been detected along up to half of Antarctica's frozen coastlines that will lead to an even greater rise in sea levels.

"While nothing catastrophic is envisioned in the next century, there could be a substantial acceleration in the [ice] melt," he said.

Monaghan expects the effects of global warming will at the Poles even after humans stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Magnetic Portals

This is a delightful bit of science that is unexpected and it is certainly linked to the phenomena of the Northern lights.

I doubt if this is significant enough to impact on the cosmic ray flux, but we are rapidly learning that magnetic fields are much more dynamic than expected and that a feedback exists that can affect climate.

The textbooks will need a serious rewrite on this one. We now have portals between the Sun’s magnetic field and the Earth that just happens to coincide with the deepest part of winter. You could not ask for a better story for science class.


Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth

Oct. 30, 2008: During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

"It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible."

Indeed, today Sibeck is telling an international assembly of space physicists at the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Alabama, that FTEs are not just common, but possibly twice as common as anyone had ever imagined.

Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected. Earth's magnetosphere (the magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet) is filled with particles from the sun that arrive via the solar wind and penetrate the planet's magnetic defenses. They enter by following magnetic field lines that can be traced from terra firma all the way back to the sun's atmosphere.

"We used to think the connection was permanent and that solar wind could trickle into the near-Earth environment anytime the wind was active," says Sibeck. "We were wrong. The connections are not steady at all. They are often brief, bursty and very dynamic."

Several speakers at the Workshop have outlined how FTEs form: On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. The European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through. "They're real," says Sibeck.

Now that Cluster and THEMIS have directly sampled FTEs, theorists can use those measurements to simulate FTEs in their computers and predict how they might behave. Space physicist Jimmy Raeder of the University of New Hampshire presented one such simulation at the Workshop. He told his colleagues that the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth's equator and then roll over Earth's winter pole. In December, FTEs roll over the north pole; in July they roll over the south pole.

Sibeck believes this is happening twice as often as previously thought. "I think there are two varieties of FTEs: active and passive." Active FTEs are magnetic cylinders that allow particles to flow through rather easily; they are important conduits of energy for Earth's magnetosphere. Passive FTEs are magnetic cylinders that offer more resistance; their internal structure does not admit such an easy flow of particles and fields. (For experts: Active FTEs form at equatorial latitudes when the IMF tips south; passive FTEs form at higher latitudes when the IMF tips north.) Sibeck has calculated the properties of passive FTEs and he is encouraging his colleagues to hunt for signs of them in data from THEMIS and Cluster. "Passive FTEs may not be very important, but until we know more about them we can't be sure."

There are many unanswered questions: Why do the portals form every 8 minutes? How do magnetic fields inside the cylinder twist and coil? "We're doing some heavy thinking about this at the Workshop," says Sibeck.

Meanwhile, high above your head, a new portal is opening, connecting your planet to the sun.

2007 Methane Anomaly

This bit is a complete surprise but correlates to the warm weather of 2007. Everyone is trying to establish a cause and effect relationship between an increase in atmospheric methane and a warmer climate. I think that is a mistake. Methane is heading at speed for the troposphere where it will not affect the lower atmosphere.

A better explanation may well be that the unusual warming patterns released a surplus of methane from the soils around the world and generated these unusual readings.

Methane is unstable and highly reactive in the atmosphere with any surplus been removed into the troposphere. All natural conditions converge on quickly removing methane from the atmosphere.

The speed of that removal is confirmed by the lack of persistence of land generated methane out over the oceans. If methane has risen at all then something is and has changed in the here and now.

I expect that these figures will not be repeated for 2008.


MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

Trendwatch

By Rick C. Hodgin


Thursday, October 30, 2008 09:55

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.

Methane - powerful greenhouse gas

The two lead authors of a paper published in this week's Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT's Department


of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.

Methane accounts for roughly one-fifth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, though its effect is 25x greater than that of carbon dioxide. Its impact on global warming comes from the reflection of the sun's light back to the Earth (like a greenhouse). Methane is typically broken down in the atmosphere by the free radical hydroxyl (OH), a naturally occurring process. This atmospheric cleanser has been shown to adjust itself up and down periodically, and is believed to account for the lack of increases in methane levels in Earth's atmosphere over the past ten years despite notable simultaneous increases by man.

More study

Prinn has said, "The next step will be to study [these changes] using a very high-resolution atmospheric circulation model and additional measurements from other networks. The key thing is to better determine the relative roles of increased methane emission versus [an increase] in the rate of removal. Apparently we have a mix of the two, but we want to know how much of each [is responsible for the overall increase]."

The primary concern now is that 2007 is long over. While the collected data from that time period reflects a simultaneous world-wide increase in emissions, observing atmospheric trends now is like observing the healthy horse running through the paddock a year after it overcame some mystery illness. Where does one even begin? And how relevant are any of the data findings at this late date? Looking back over 2007 data as it was captured may prove as ineffective if the data does not support the high resolution details such a study requires.

One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it's too early to know for sure if man's impact is affecting things at the political cry of "alarming rates." We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times - one that's been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occuring for hundreds of thousands of years.Project funding

Rigby and Prinn carried out this study with help from researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Bristol and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Methane gas measurements came from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Australian CSIRO network.

Biological Black Sand Via Palocene - Eocene Global Warming

This sounds like something that could still exist. An iron rich environment is necessary, or so it is assumed, and we know that this is uncommon. We know that these fossils occurred in an oceanic environment and were surely limited even then to rare iron rich oases. The conditions about these oases would surely be similar to that discovered around volcanic smokers.

In fact these smokers are rich in iron and it is very possible that these particular life forms make their home there. No one has looked yet.

This is also a viable answer to another geological question about magnetite. Most placer rivers contain a lot of magnetite in the form of black sand that is rarely if ever associated with an actual magnetite deposit. Could we be dealing with erosional release of magnetite in grain form from ancient sediments?

Or perhaps be assembled in deep metamorphic conditions before been released into the rivers. Recall that magnetite is almost as stubborn as gold and is a heavy metal. That is why it shows up in gold placer operations.

An informant of mine went to the beach once and noticed that the sand seemed greyer than normal even though it was obviously silica. He inspected it carefully and found no special evidence on anything other than silica.

He then pulled out his handy neodymium magnet (many times stronger than iron magnets) and swirled it around through the sand. He pulled out a great deal of super fine magnetite powder. He asked me what I thought might have caused this to happen. I had no good answer except to extend the classic not credible erosional idea. We now have the answer.

The existence of magneto bugs around smokers needs to be investigated and the possible existence today of their larger cousins also needs to be checked. Thirty years ago we did not know that smokers existed. Perhaps we should look?`

Paleocene/Eocene Global warming produces new life form

Researchers discover 'giant' magnetofossils from microorganisms that thrived 55 million years ago

Researchers from McGill University, along with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology, the Curie Institute in Paris, Princeton University and other institutions, have unearthed crystalline magnetic fossils of a previously unknown species of microorganism that lived at the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, some 55 million years ago. Their results were published Oct. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research might help scientists understand more thoroughly the potential effects of significant changes in the Earth's climate.

Though they are only some four microns long, these newly discovered, spear-shaped magnetite crystals (magnetofossils) – unearthed at a dig in New Jersey – are up to eight times larger than previously known magnetofossils. Magnetofossils are remnants of magnetite crystals produced by a type of bacteria called magnetotactic bacteria that are capable of orienting themselves along the direction of the Earth's magnetic field.

The new fossils are "unlike any magnetite crystal ever described," the study's first author Dirk Schumann – a graduate student at McGill's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences – told Nature News.

"Previous reports suggested that the source of the magnetic signature in the boundary layer was a type of magnetite that was formed by the impact of a comet," said lead researcher and corresponding author Dr. Hojatollah Vali. "In our previous paper we proved that the magnetic signature comes from biogenic material.

"This is an entirely new class of organism that no one has reported before," explained Vali, a professor jointly appointed in McGill's Departments of Anatomy and Cell Biology and Earth and Planetary Sciences. "When my colleagues and I first discovered magnetofossils in deep-sea sediments in the mid-1980s, we knew already that magnetotactic bacteria produced magnetite and then we looked for the magnetofossils. In our new study, we discovered the magnetofossils first without knowing the organism."

This species of microorganism, explained Vali, lived during a period of abrupt global warming known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when worldwide temperatures rose by 5° to 6° C over a period of 20,000 years.

"What's very interesting is that we know the very specific time frame when these organisms existed," he said. "If you go below it, we don't find them, and if you go above it, we don't find them. Five degrees warmer may not seem like much, but there was much more iron available due to increased weathering.

The additional iron is required for the microorganism to produce the giant magnetofossils. It is clear that a similar abrupt global warming climatic event could have a severe impact upon our biosphere."

Mark Shainblum

mark.shainblum@mcgill.ca 514-398-2189 McGill University

Dr. Gideon Polya on End of Coal Power

Dr Gideon Polya makes and documents the very good point that alternative energy strategies are converging in cost and price with the established fossil fuel protocols. All these systems had the potential to do this or they would simply not have been pursued in the first place. That thirty years of development and research effort is visibly paying of is gratifying.

Dr Gideon Polya is an apologist for a fair bit of left of center political thinking, but he has come through here with a tidy bit of home work on the developing trends in alternative energy systems.

The most visible at present are the now thousands of windmills built and been built. They are easily on the way to providing ten percent of global grid power. Further technical progress such as the axial motor promises to add a couple of points there and the addition of vanadium redox batteries can expand its usage as a sole source power system for large industrial installations. These ideas are all possible because it is simply becoming price competitive.

Cheap solar installations are also soon to become very visible and the same comments apply.

Tide and wave are still at the stage that windmill power was at thirty years ago and we will be waiting those thirty years before it may become important.

All these systems needed some form of non consumable energy storage. That is becoming available with the emergence of vanadium redox batteries.

What is important in this presentation is that all this is now becoming directly competitive with coal fired power plants. Bluntly put, coal is now on the road to extinction and it will happen over a generation at most. The coal industry was preserved as a power source solely because of price and easy availability. Windmills are even more available because of both modular design and much less stringent permitting needs. The same will hold true for cheap solar now coming on stream.

I could find no way to link the art work, but you may go to this link to see it.

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/26137&Itemid=1

“One Day Pathétique” Symphony Painting

Tchaikovski’s final “Pathétique” Symphony is actually Joyous and Hopeful as is the energy cost cross-over point - the best renewable and geothermal power options now cost the same as coal power.

I have painted a huge (1.3 metre x 2.9 metre) painting entitled “One Day Pathétique” that captures Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovski’s final Symphony Number 6, the so-called “Pathétique”. Tchaikovski was delighted with this symphony but because he died a fortnight after its first performance the symphony has become known as the “Pathétique”. There is, however, a joyous and hopeful interpretation of this great work as opposed to the traditional sad, pathos-laden view. One Christmas morning I listened to Tchaikovski’s Symphony Number 6 as the sun was rising over the beautiful Yarra River Valley and I suddenly realized why Tchaikovski was so pleased with his final symphony – it clearly describes one day in the life of a human being. The Symphony is in 4 Movements and is famous for starting off very gently (as one slowly wakes up) and for concluding so softly that you strain to hear the last notes (as one drifts off to sleep after a full day). In between, the Symphony successively evokes the early morning, morning activities, noon time glory, the march of shadows in the late afternoon, and the glory of the stars. Once you realize the One Day interpretation everything fits so beautifully that you can really understand why Tchaikovski was so delighted with the symphony and regarded it as his finest work.

My “One Day Pathétique” Symphony Painting is also conveniently divided into 4 Sections (evoking the 4 Movements of the Symphony) which are determined by the 4 major overlapping circles of a classical Italian Renaissance Double Golden Rectangle geometry. I use beautiful young maidens as figurative, almost abstract expressionist elements to tell the story of a lovely day. Reading Left to Right, the maidens slowly wake up (as do birds and flower buds); they then go into the woods gathering wood, berries and flowers; midday sees them busily engaged in the meadows (as are rabbits and birds); and in the evening the glorious stars come out, the birds roost, night birds fly out to hunt, and the maidens rest and finally drift off to sleep.

My “One Day Pathétique” Symphony Painting is about joy, beauty, nature and hope – and is ideal for illustrating the Good News in the current Climate Emergency. Just as my painting was inspired by the Sun coming up over the beautiful Yarra Valley, so have I been galvanized by our local Yarra Valley Climate Action Group that is trying to help save the Planet from man-made global warming. Many of my colleagues in the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (and in its umbrella Climate Emergency Network and Climate Movement national umbrella groups) are deeply despondent about the notorious Australian inaction in the mounting Climate Emergency. Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters but its extreme right wing, pro-Coal Government is strong on rhetoric but lacking in action. The $100 billion per annum Australian coal industry has effectively squashed sensible action and determined the resolutely pro-Coal stance of the major political parties (the Federally-governing Labor and the Opposition Liberal-National Party Coalition, these being collectively known as Lib-Labs). I am nevertheless optimistic and tell my colleagues that science, technology, sensible risk management and sensible business practice will eventually triumph over neocon greed, irresponsibility, denial, ignoring, climate scepticism, climate racism, climate terrorism, climate genocide, dishonesty and spin.

Man-made (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution from fossil fuel burning, methanogenic livestock production, other agriculture (notably major crop-based biofuel generation) and deforestation have lifted the atmospheric GHG concentration to a dangerous level. Top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) has declared that “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm (see: here ), a view recently essentially endorsed by the Head of the Nobel Prize-winning UN IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

In 2007 I published an assessment of the relative costs of power from a variety of sources (see: here ). A key observation was that a Canadian Ontario Government-commissioned study had found that the “true cost” of coal burning-based power (taking the human and environmental impact into account) was 4-5 times the “market price”. Already in 2007 it was apparent that the cost of power from all the lower-cost renewable energy systems (in cents per kilowatt hour) was LOWER than the “true cost” coal burning-based power.

However, as summarized below, it is now apparent that a crucial CROSS-OVER POINT has now been reached at which the cost of power from a range of lower-cost renewable sources is about the SAME as the “market price” of coal burning –based power. In the analysis below the COST OF POWER (e.g. as measured in units such as US cents per kilowatt hour or US$ per megawatt hour) is given for a variety of non-carbon energy sources, together with an estimate of the MAGNITUDE of the various renewable and/or non-carbon energy resources. For detailed documentation of the information given below the reader is directed to a summary provided (with numerous links) by the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group entitled “CROSS-OVER POINT: Best Renewable and Geothermal Power NOW for SAME COST as Fossil fuel-based Power”.

1. Wind Power

According to NOVA Science in the News (published by the prestigious Australian Academy of Science, 2008): “advances in wind power science and technology are reducing the cost of wind power to a point at which it is becoming competitive with many other energy sources (at about 8 Australian cents per kilowatt hour)” [i.e. 5.6 US cents per kilowatt hour [kWh] or US$56 per megawatt hour [MWh]). According to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) the average cost of onshore wind power in the UK (2005) was 3.2 p/kWh [i.e. 5.2 US cents per kilowatt hour or US$52 per megawatt hour (MWh)] . According to the US Energy Information Administration the cost per unit of energy produced from wind was estimated in 2006 to be comparable to the cost of new generating capacity in the United States for coal and natural gas: wind cost was estimated at US$55.80 per MWh [megawatt hour], coal at US$53.10 per MWh and natural gas at US$52.50 per MWh.

According to a Stanford University study “global wind power generated at locations with mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m is found to be ~72 TW (~54,000 Mtoe [million tons of oil equivalent]) for the year 2000. Even if only ~20% of this power could be captured, it could satisfy 100% of the world’s energy demand for all purposes (6995-10177 Mtoe) and over seven times the world’s electricity needs (1.6-1.8 TW)”.

There is huge potential for off-shore wind power. According to Research and Markets (May 2008; summarizing the Global Wind Power Report 2008): “Wind is the world’s fastest-growing energy source with an average annual growth rate of 29% over the last ten years. In 2007, the global wind power generating capacity crossed 94 gigawatts (GW). This represents a twelve-fold increase from a decade ago, when world wind-generating capacity stood at just over 7.6 gigawatts (GW). Being an emerging fuel source a decade ago, wind energy has grown rapidly into a mature and booming global industry. Further, the power generation costs of wind energy have fallen by 50%, moving closer to the cost of conventional energy sources. The future prospects of the global wind industry are very encouraging and it is estimated to grow by more than 70% over the next five years to reach 160 gigawatts (GW) by year 2012”.

2. Concentrated Solar Power with Energy Storage

The US solar energy company Ausra uses a form of Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) technology called Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) technology. In short, solar energy is collected and concentrated in a sophisticated way and used to generate steam to drive turbines and hence generate electricity. A key feature is that solar energy is stored, enabling Ausra CLFR plants to generate electricity 24 hours per day. An Ausra factory producing 700 megawatt (MW) of solar collectors annually opened in Nevada in 2008. Ausra is involved in joint construction of a 177 megawatt (MW) CLFR plant for California. According to Ausra (2008): “Ausra's innovations in collector design dramatically reduce the cost of solar thermal generation equipment and bring solar power to prices directly competitive with fossil fuel power. Using Ausra's current solar technologies, all U.S. electric power, day and night, can be generated using a land area smaller than 92 by 92 miles”.

Solar energy hitting the Earth is roughly 10,000 times greater than the energy we consume globally. Global electricity production (2005) was 17,400 TWh. Exciting new research developments on hydrogen fuel cells (at Monash University, Australia) and efficient electrolysis (at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) presage an efficient, solar energy-based, hydrogen fuel cell-run transportation system within a decade.

3. Wave power

The cost of wave power by the CETO system (a sea bed-fixed pump linked to a buoyant actuator) is about that of wind power. There are further big cost efficiencies if wave power is used for cogeneration of potable water. A Carnegie Corporation submission to an Australian Parliamentary Committee (2007) states: that “CETO can offer zero-emission base-load electricity generation capacity at a cost comparable to existing wind power [i.e. about US$50 per MWh] and the capacity to provide potable water to major population centres using 100% clean energy”.

Further, this Submission states: “The World Energy Council has estimated that approximately 2 Terawatts (TW), about double current world electricity production, could be produced from oceans via wave power … It is estimated that 1 million gigawatt hours (GWh) of wave energy hits Australian shores annually, or more than four times Australian’s total annual electricity consumption of 210,000 gigawatt hours (2004 figures)”.

4. Hydro power

According to the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development (2002) various New Zealand hydroelectric power systems provided power for 4-10 NZ cents per kilowatt hour [2.4-5.9 US cents per kilowatt hour i.e. US$24-59 per megawatt hour].

According to BNET (2007): “Hydropower currently accounts for approximately 20% of the world's electricity production, with about 650,000 MW (650 GW) installed and approximately 135,000 MW (135 GW) under construction or in the final planning stages … It is estimated that only about a quarter of the economically exploitable water resources has been developed to date”.

5. Geothermal power

According to Professor John Veevers (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia): “The [Australian hot rocks] geothermal resource extends over 1000 square kilometres … Modelled costs are 4 Australian cents per kilowatt hour, plus half to 1 cent for transmission to grid [4.5 Australian cents per kWh = 3.2 US cents per kWh or US$32 per MWh]. This compares with 3.5 cents for black coal, 4 cents for brown coal, 4.2 cents for gas, but all with uncosted emissions. Clean coal, the futuristic technology of coal gasification combined with CO2 sequestration or burial, yet to be demonstrated, comes in at 6.5 cents, and solar and wind power at 8 cents” see “The Innamincka hot fractured rock project” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics”, editor Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007; also see energy cost-related chapters in this book by Dr Gideon Polya “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality”, Dr Mark Diesendorf “A sustainable energy future for Australia”, and by Martin Mahy “Hydrogen Minibuses”).

According to the Report of an interdisciplinary panel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) experts entitled “The Future of Geothermal Energy” (2006) : “EGS [Enhanced Geothermal Systems] is one of the few renewable energy resources that can provide continuous base-load power with minimal visual and other environmental impacts … The accessible geothermal resource, based on existing extractive technology, is large and contained in a continuum of grades ranging from today’s hydrothermal, convective systems through high- and mid-grade EGS resources located primarily in the western United States) to the very large, conduction-dominated contributions in the deep basement and sedimentary rock formations throughout the country. By evaluating an extensive database of bottom-hole temperature and regional geologic data (rock types, stress level, surface temperature etc), we have estimated that the total EGS resource has to be more than 13 million exajoules (EJ) [13 million EJ x 277.8 TWh per EJ = 3611.4 million TWh]. Using reasonable assumptions regarding how heat would be used from stimulated EGS reservoirs, we also estimated the extractable portion to exceed 0.2 million EJ (0.2 million EJ x 277.8 TWh per EJ = 55.56 million TWh) ... With technological improvements, the economically extractable amount of useful energy could increase by a factor of 10 or more, thus making EGS sustainable for centuries” (see Chapter1, p1-4).

Nuclear power can be dismissed as a serious future option in this analysis because the overall nuclear power cycle (from mining to waste disposal) currently has a major CO2-polluting component (equivalent to that of a modern gas-fired power plant); the cost of nuclear power via the UK's newest Sizewell B plant is 15 Australian cents per kilowatt hour [10.5 US cents per kilowatt hour or US$105 per MWh; required high grade uranium ore is a very limited resource; and long-term safe storage of waste and security issues are unresolved. Biofuel from land-based crops (notably canola, palm oil, sugar and corn) is highly CO2 polluting from mechanisms such as de-forestation and loss of soil carbon. Indeed the biofuel perversion that is legislatively mandated in the US, the UK and the EU is making a huge contribution to global food price rises that in turn are threatening the lives of “billions” of people according to UK Chief Scientific Advisor Professor John Beddington FRS (see “Global Food Crisis. US Biofuel & CO2 threaten billions”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/21277/42/ ).

In Summary, while the World has arguably already reached “peak oil” and uranium, gas and coal resources are limited, the solar energy hitting the Earth is roughly 10,000 times greater than the energy that Man consumes globally. Geothermal resources are immense. Already developed and implemented geothermal power technologies and low-cost renewable energy technologies directly dependent on solar energy (concentrated solar thermal power) or indirectly dependent on solar energy (hydro, wind and wave power) have reached a CROSS-OVER POINT at which the cost of power in cents per kilowatt hour are COMMENSURATE with the current “market cost” of fossil fuel burning –based power. Further, the “true cost” of coal burning-based power (i.e. taking the environmental and human impact into account) is 4-5 times the “market cost”. Exciting new research developments at Monash University, Australia, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, presage the possibility of an efficient, solar energy-based, hydrogen fuel cell-run transportation system within a decade.

Former US Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore has recently (mid-2008) called for 100% renewable electric power with ten years: “Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years” (see: here). Carbon-free power is now technically and economically feasible at a “market cost” commensurate with the “market cost” of fossil fuel burning-based power.

The science, technology and economics thus indicate that the urgent need (enunciated by NASA’s Dr James Hansen and his colleagues) to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration from the current 387 ppm to no more than 350 ppm can be realized NOW with low-cost renewable energy and geothermal energy implementation coupled with cessation of fossil fuel burning and de-forestation, minimization of agricultural methanogenesis, massive re-afforestation and return of carbon as biochar to the world’s soils.

Just as there is an Optimistic Interpretation of Tchaikovski’s “Pathétique” Symphony, so we see that with honesty and goodwill the World can successfully address the acutely serious Climate Emergency in a vigorous and timely fashion.

Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---