Autopoeisis

The methane declines might be associated with reduced plant life on earth. Destruction of rainforest areas in particular might be the culprit. There was a recent paper in Scientific American I am linking it below about plants emitting methane. I am not particularly sure about the volume of methane we are talking about but methane has a substantially higher global warming potential than CO2. It was a big surprise to people in academics and it may be a bit of a bummer for those people that think that planting trees is going to offset out carbon impacts. I am not allowed to spam so can't post links. But just google scientific american plants emitting methane and the article should come up.

The one thing that painting roads white, buildings white, and greenroofs are going to do is reduce the heat island effect in cities which is good anyways. I'm not sure about the global warming part and whether it will make significant impact. Now regarding the global dimming documentary I think that the predictions at the end were a bit dismal. They were saying we need to make 90% reductions in our carbon footprint by 2035 or we could pass the tipping point. That is a change from the 80-90% perscription by 2050 which has seemingly become the norm. Now the consideration I have is while there have been reductions in pollutants in developed countries they have been growing in the developing world, I am curious whether that is significant enough of a shift to offset reductions in Europe and North America. I mean some of the most polluted cities on earth are in China. In addition while that two percent mark is clear in relation to contrails from airplanes, flights are the largest growing source of GHGs (and thus contrails equally) of any sector. That trend I feel is unlikely to reverse any time soon, air travel in Europe with deregulation, and discount airlines hase expanded massively. They also made mention at the end of methane hydrate deposit leaks, but the last academic paper I read on the subject said that it was extremely unlikely because it would require a significant shift in water temperatures which was much slower to occur. So are the people making projections with global dimming considering these changes, I'm sure they are brilliant people and must be. Lets hope they are not because the scenario looks pretty dismal.

Certainly not I don't think we should pollute in order to reduce the intensity of global warming, the narrative was only meant to illustrate that while people are scoffing at the minimal increase in temperature it is also due to a concurrent phenomena of dimming. You are right there are conservatives that believe in the environment and democrats that don't (clean air act was passed with the much more respectable father of George W in office, you have Republicans like Schwarzenager taking the cause on in California, even in my the state of Pennsylvania former Ridge has better environmental performance than the more democratic Rendell, and some corporations are making advances in using more resource efficient technologies. Is that an exception or the rule, is that political opportunism, is it greenwash by corporations, the democratic congress controled congress under Herbert Walker. Sure I think there are some progressive conservatives and some vandguard corporations ahead in the environmental movement and I applaud these changes. However while it may be a generalization much of the opposition against changes in environmental policy come from the right and the business world. Independent of whether BP renames itself Beyond Petroleum or David Cameron (potential Tory PM of England) takes a photo opportunity next to glaciers business and conservatives as a unit are slowing progress in environmental legislation.

There is a BBC documentary titled 'Global Dimming' you can get it on Torrent Spy which may be interesting to watch for everyone. It is a bit extreme in the predictive realm concerning future events definitely taking worst case scenario. TV does go a bit extreme to get your attention. The premise is at the same time we have been producing CO2 which increases the amount of energy the earth can absorb from the sun industrialized nations have been producing pollutants that have been dimming the planet reducing the amount of sunlight that gets through. So anthropogenic CO2 warming effects have been reduced by the other concurrent anthropogenic cooling phenomena. However we have been steadily been reducing our dimming effects (with exception of developing nations India and China being the largest contibuters) because of the health concerns related to these pollutants. IPCC estimates are pretty conservative because they rely on consensus between a large variety of scientists. Thus their predictions concerning melting at the ice caps were 1/3 of recent melting measured. Regarding the ocean current issue it is difficult to predict scenarios if that happens, just as it is difficult to predict what happens if large deposits of methane hydrates are released at the bottom of the ocean(the latter I feel is a highly unlikely but frightening scenario). The thing about it is that global temperatures may have increased .7 degrees C but temperature increase distribution is different (higher at the poles and lower at the equator). So while Europe and North America may on the net cool, the gulf stream from my understanding doesn't extend to the Northern Pole and may not have an impact on temperatures there. Melting is still likely to occur and hence global water levels will still rise. People in the industrialized north may use more energy to heat their homes or you may see migration. Agricultural output is likely to be severely affected with those regions producing a significant portion of world output. I am however concerned about weather patterns and the distribution of fresh water because these water currents from my understanding are responsible for considerable cloud formation and hence rainfall. Billions of people are reliant upon suitable rainfall (particularly those in areas that have low rainfall or highly seasonal (monsoon) rainfall patterns. Its difficult to predict the weather but they are getting better at it. You got different varieties of fear mongering on both sides. But those at the right have a lot to lose and have a consistent record of lying (cigarettes, lead exposure ect). Scientists don't seem to have as much interest in decieving people, the pay really isn't too high and the work is tough.

I agree efficiency is important. I was curious what the potential would be to make charcoal and create enough heat for the purposes of cooking simultaneously. Efficient ovens deal very well with the health effects of biomass cooking and reduce the burden on local ecologies. But if you are mainstreaming techniques in 'biomass poor' areas with the intention of helping improve agricultural productivity for the poor you may want to simultaneously conduct community based reforestation projects in the meantime. Well the issue with solar cooking is that it isn't that easy to do. It takes a while to achieve temperature levels using conventional solar cooking systems. Parabolics are a bit more efficient, and there are some hybrids (I'm not sure if anyone has seen the solar cooker devised by the gaviotas people). However many of these systems are more costly working better on the community scale as opposed to the household scale. In other areas you are going to have abundant levels of biomass like rainforests. I am curious as to which ways it would be most effective to mainstream appropriate techniques to produce biochar for communities. It seems that there may be potential to get funding from the clean development mechanism, because it is a significant reduction of emissions from the normal state of affairs(slash and burn agriculture). Of course you would have to carefully audit GHG reductions

I hope that this thread reflects upon a new topic for everyone's consideration. I believe in the potential for Terra Preta is great, my field is international development so I am going to focus on what I know. After reflecting upon the utilization of terra preta in developing countries I found that it could certainly be effective as a cheap soil amendment to enhance local agricultural productivity at a cost significantly lower than external outputs. In addition it has clear environmental benefits in certain circumstances particularly in regions where slash and burn agriculture applied heavily South East Asia and Africa have a much higher prevalence of slash and burn as a cause for deforestation than South America. In these cases it is likely make slash and burn agriculturalists more sedentary, by eliminating their need to leave land fallow for extended periods of time and clear new lands, thus conserving tropical rainforests. In all cases it has benefits in addressing a global environmental problem, reducing green house gases. Now here comes my issue, more of a barrier to implementation in specific circumstances. Now in other developing country regions we have a considerable utilization of biomass already for use as cooking fuel. In many of these countries they already produce charcoal to cook with which would compete with the production of biochar as a soil amendment. Continued use of biomass for cooking in many of these countries threatens local ecologies significantly, a good example of this would be Haiti. The adverse environmental effects are considerable. There are significant health problems associated with using biomass for cooking, it is a major cause of respiratory infections, one of the top five killers of ages 1-5 internationally. Now where do we find ourselves in these circumstances. You transfer the techniques for making biochar to these poor and it may increase demand on 'biomass poor' ecologies as well as increase household costs for cooking charcoal. Now this could be mitigated by introducing alternatives to cooking charcoal. I personally would like to see the complete replacement of biomass cooking in these regions, and feel that biochar could aid in healing local ecologies with complementary application of appropriate conservation techniques. But then you are not only discussing the technology transfer of biochar to poor communities but also complementary programs. I hope if anyone has any similar or contrary experience with development issues that they can comment on these issues.

Greetings everyone, A short introduction I am not a soil scientist like a lot of people here but I am a student and hopeful practitioner of international development. I was in the Amazon Rainforest a few months back working on some community programs mostly Non-Timber Forest Product Commercialization but I am well pretty well informed across the whole field of international development and environmental conservation. I can say that I understand a lot of scientific issues related to agriculture. I am very interested in the topic of terra preta and its application for rainforest conservation, community development, and carbon sequestration. From my analysis thusfar I think it has a lot of potential as part of a forest management strategy. I am posting here to introduce a new topic for discussion which seems a important consideration that has been missed. Charcoal is produced in a lot of developing countries for cooking. In places like Haiti for example the production of charcoal and extraction of biomass for cooking is by itself a significant cause of environmental destruction. It would seem that in some places it my contribute to ecological conservation while in others it may compete with biomass utilized for for cooking fuel. I'm thinking of ways this can be resolved including the introduction of alternative or more efficient cooking technologies. This has certainly been mentioned already in posts but I am also curious as to what effects the introduction of terra preta techniques will have on different soil ecologies.