Opposition to the idea of biochar, charcoal, Terra preta

[Michaelangelica]

The Opposition to biochar, charcoal, Terra preta

It had to come didn't it?

Note the word "opposition", because that is what it is. I haven't seen any science yet.

I especially love the criticism about it being a"new" idea. I translate that to mean "I've been too stupid to notice what has being going on for the last 20 years."

 

o

o HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

 

ASEN

Australian Student Environment Network

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ASEN signs onto International Declaration: ‘Biochar’, a new big threat to people, land, and ecosystems

 

26 March 2009 @ 9:48am Climate, News

 

The Australian Student Environment Network has today signed onto the International Declaration: ‘‘Biochar’, a new big threat to people, land, and ecosystems’ (below).

 

We are looking forward to being involved in supporting ongoing organising resistance to biochar, ‘offsets’, technofixes, and other unjust non-solutions to climate change.

 

Keep ‘biochar’ and soils out of carbon trading

 

Caution urged against proposals for large scale use of charcoal in soils for climate change mitigation and soil reclamation

 

Adding charcoal (‘biochar’) to the soil has been proposed as a ‘climate change mitigation’ strategy and as a means of regenerating degraded land.

Some even claim that this could sequester so much carbon that the Earth could return to pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels, i.e. that all the global warming caused by fossil fuel burning and ecosystem destruction could be reversed. Such . . .

. . .

Proposals for ‘climate change mitigation’ through large-scale adoption of ‘biochar’ are a dangerous form of geo-engineering based on unfounded claims.

 

A lobby group (the International Biochar Initiative) made up largely of startup ‘biochar’ and agrofuel companies and academics, many of them with related commercial interests, are behind the push for ‘biochar’. Their extremely bold claims are not founded in scientific understanding. + It is not yet known whether charcoal in soil represents a ‘carbon sink’ at all. Industrial charcoal is very different from Terra Preta, the highly fertile and carbon-rich soils found in Central Amazonia which were created by indigenous peoples hundreds and even thousands of years ago. ‘Biochar’ companies and researchers have not been able to recreate Terra Preta.

 

• + ‘Biochar’ advocates are promoting ‘targets’ which would require the use of 500 million hectares or more of land to be used for producing charcoal plus energy. Industrial monocultures of fast growing trees and other feedstocks for the pulp and paper industry and for agrofuels are already creating severe social and environmental impacts which worsen climate change.
  This very large new demand for ‘biochar’ would greatly exacerbate these problems.
   
  
• + There is a risk that ‘biochar’ could in future be used to promote the development of genetically engineered (GE) tree varieties specifically engineered for ‘biochar’ production or to try and extend the range of fast-growing trees, both of which could have very serious ecological impacts.
   
  
• + There is no consistent evidence that charcoal can be relied upon to make soil more fertile. Industrial charcoal production at the expense of organic matter needed for making humus could have the opposite results.
   
  
• + Combinations of charcoal with fossil fuel-based fertilisers made from scrubbing coal power plant flue gases are being promoted as ‘biochar’, and those will help to perpetuate fossil fuel burning as well as emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.
   
  
• + The process for making charcoal and energy (pyrolysis) can result in dangerous soil and air pollution.
  

ASEN ASEN signs onto International Declaration: ?Biochar?, a new big threat to people, land, and ecosystems

Fairy typical debating gambits here. Make up your oppositions argument and then demolish it, exaggerate, emotive words, take extreme examples, lie etc

 

Some more links to the argy bargy here.

http://earthblips.dailyradar.com/story/woodchips_with_everything_it_s_the_atkins_plan_of_the/

 

It looks like we have arrived! I might just bow out now and go grow some plants and try and work out how to desalinate water, the next big problem.

[jankdc]

Here are some responses to Monbiot from Lovelock and Hansen that were posted at Treehugger:

 

Lovelock: You Don't Have to Plant Trees...

Lovelock responded:

 

Yes, it is silly to rename charcoal as biochar and yes, it would be wrong to plant anything specifically to make charcoal. So I agree, George, it would be wrong to have plantations in the tropics just to make charcoal. [...]

 

What we have to do is turn a portion of all the waste of agriculture into charcoal and bury it. Consider grain like wheat or rice; most of the plant mass is in the stems, stalks and roots and we only eat the seeds. So instead of just ploughing in the stalks or turning them into cardboard, make it into charcoal and bury it or sink it in the ocean. We don't need plantations or crops planted for biochar, what we need is a charcoal maker on every farm so the farmer can turn his waste into carbon.

 

Hansen: We Never Said Biochar Was Miracle Cure

Hansen's response was equally clear,

 

Although we do mention waste-derived biochar as a possible mitigation option, it certainly does not mean we are advocating that as the panacea. Indeed, as we very clearly outline in the paper [Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?], our scenarios assume waste-derived biochar provides only a very small fraction of the land use-related CO2 drawdown, with reforestation and curtailed deforestation providing a magnitude more. Nowhere do we assert or imply plantations should be grown specifically for biochar, or that reforestation should be at the expense of food crops, pristine ecosystems or substantially inhabited land. Furthermore, all relevant numbers used in our mitigation scenarios are derived from the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

 

On the issue of land use changes in general, our paper clearly states any biofuels approach must be very carefully designed, and we cite two major critiques of current biofuels approaches. We agree there are still fundamental uncertainties associated with biochar as a mitigation option, but the peer-reviewed papers we cite describe these uncertainties.

 

Again, since I can't post links it is at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/biochar-is-no-climate-change-miracle-cure-george-monbiot-says.php

[maikeru]

George Monbiot sounds like he has not read any of the articles about biochar, and also he makes the deadly assumption that biochar production requires the establishment of "biochar plantations" to produce "woodchips" for biochar.

 

PLEASE. No one is talking about setting the world on fire. No one is talking about pulping the Amazon forest to make billions of tons of biochar. No one is talking about covering continents in endless waves of wheat, corn, and soy, so that they can fulfill their highest purpose: to be fried for biochar. This is silly.

 

Any organic matter, so long as it contains sufficient carbon, can be pyrolyzed and converted into biochar under the proper conditions and methods. This includes agricultural, municipal, industrial, and perhaps managed forestry/gardening wastes. It can be household kitchen wastes, yard or lawn clippings, or biomass harvested from farmed or reclaimed grasslands and prairies or forests and bush. It could be organic materials such as seaweeds, salt-tolerant plants, or types of algae harvested from oceans, lakes, or streams.

 

Those are probably more sustainable, more economical, more practical, and more applicable in almost every situation. Give farmers an incentive not to burn their crop residues to ashes but to char. Give sanitary projects and cities the idea that it is better to store and detoxify deadly wastes and make them into crucial, healthy resources. Help lighten the load on overfilled and toxic dumps. Help lighten the load on overburdened ecosystems that must deal with nutrient overflows and toxic air. And help lighten the load on forests, grasslands, oceans, and other critical and vulnerable ecosystems that are destroyed or exploited for further agricultural production when old land or resources are used up. Also, many papers advocating or discussing biochar have suggested that emissions should be captured, purified, and then reused or sold for economic and environmental gain. Very few biochar advocates want to just mass produce charcoal with dirty kilns, releasing all the emissions and particulates into the air. In fact, I can almost think of no one. Whether it is at universities in Hawaii, Arizona, Europe, or Australia, almost all the scientists and other academics are exploring projects with ways to capture and make use of emissions from the pyrolysis process. Read their papers and see.

 

In combination with biochar, I also believe that farmers should be given incentives to use appropriate natural and organic fertilizers, such as green manures, seaweed, or safe agricultural waste, to help maintain or restore soil fertility. Biochar cannot do it alone. It needs nutrients to capture, store, and then release. And the soil organisms and plants need their share too. It is clear that biochar is not the only and supreme solution, but it is, IMO, one of the best solutions when combined as part of a greater, sustainable, ecologically responsible package. There are so few solutions proposed thus far that benefit both the environment and people alike in so many ways. That is why I support biochar.

[maikeru]

I left George Monbiot a letter on his website about his misinformed biochar articles. I suggest you do the same. Monbiot.com.

 

Let him know that it's not just "a select few" academics, intellectuals, and scientists trying to set the planet on fire! But that gardeners, farmers, environmentalists, conservationists, and enthusiasts from every walk of life are interested in this rather uncommonly common thing called biochar!

[collier]

Initially, Monbiot's essay was a bit upsetting, i read it at Common Dreams. Upon further reflection, maybe it's not so bad. I doubt that anybody who recognizes that the actual paradigm is lots of folks doing biochar at modest levels is going to be scared off by Monbiot's launching an attack on the sort of folks who can't get their minds around any solution to environmental problems that doesn't involve major capital investment, systems managers, and massive factory systems.

What worries me is that somebody will manage to forward an agenda like what Monbiot excoriates, and further damage the planet in the process of learning that such an approach is utterly misguided. Monbiot's accidentally on the side of the angels.

[erich]

These two links below are my main rebuttal to the BioFuelWatch anti Char Campaign;

 

One aspect of Biochar systems are Cheap, clean biomass stoves that produce biochar and no respiratory disease. At scale, the health benefits are greater than ending Malaria.

A great example;

http://www.unccd.int/publicinfo/poznanclimatetalks/docs/Natural%20Draft%20Stove.pdf

 

Also , I would like the BioFuelWatch folks to read the petition of 1500 Cameroon Farmers;

 

The Biochar Fund

biocharfund.com Domain Name Parking Page

 

 

 

This forward from the list by

Laurens Rademakers

Erich

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: <[email protected]>

Date: Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:27 AM

Subject: [biochar] Anyone doing biochar in developing countries?

To: [email protected]

 

 

 

 

Hi,

we're compiling a list of organisations and names of individual

(subsistence) farmers who support biochar in developing countries. We

will use the list as signatories to a simple message in favor of

biochar.

 

So far we have the Biochar Fund's people -- around 1500 poor,

small-scale farmers in Cameroon and Congo -- but we are looking for

more supporters.

 

If your organisation has a biochar project in the South, AND if you

want to be part of this statement, AND if the participants of your

project really understand the stakes of what biochar is about, AND if

they want to sign up, then please provide the following:

 

-name of your organisation / or your name if you are an individual

-names of the local organisations you're working with

-names of the individual participants: FIRST NAME, LAST NAME,

VILLAGE/TOWN, PROVINCE/STATE, COUNTRY

 

Please send your list to either:

-the biochar yahoo group's mailing list

[email protected]

[email protected]

 

With this message and its signatories, we hope to make an impression

on policy makers. Thank you very much.

 

Laurens Rademakers, Cameroon

[lemit]

It's good to know the fact that I don't understand biochar and terra preta as well as other people is not a barrier to having an opinion about it.

 

Maybe I should contact those Australian students. We could have a good debate based on ignorance.

 

--lemit