[Terrapreta] Up late, not doing sums, just hoping

[Michael Bailes]

 John Cowan to me
show details
 01:58 (17 minutes ago)
>
> Micheal, here's a good question. At $200/ton or even $20/ton what would be
> the cost in getting sufficient carbon into the ground to make a significant
> difference in the atmosphere? This would need to include production of
> charcoal, transportation, tillage. Actually,  the charcoal does not need to
> go in the ground to reduce CO2 as long as it is not burnt as it is not going
> to degrade any other way. Just a thought.
>
Hi John
Either you or I am up very late
I will do anything for you as long as it does not involve sums.
Better people than me have looked at this and felt that it would be possible
with wholesale adoption of TP techniques to stop the current rise in global
CO2.
 $200 a tonne for say chicken manure char with the fertiliser equivalent of
blood and bone, something that will save me maybe 17% water; halve my
fertiliser bills and run off; improve my CEC, pH (depending on what it is to
start), conductivity,  humification, microbe ecology, physical structuring,
gas diffusion, plant root interface,etc sounds VERY cheap to me. PS Don't
dig it in
A BEST pyrolysis machine can produce 2-4 tonnes of char an hour. Multiply
that by a million council and factory organic waste dumps and you start to
get something significant.

> My disappointment about some of the discussion is the lack of basic and
> intermediate knowledge about soil. I don't see how we can talk about TP in
> the original sense [not atmospheric carbon sequestration] if the basics are
> not understood somewhat - CEC, conductivity, pH, humification, microbe
> ecology, physical structuring, gas diffusion, plant root interface, etc. I
> have re-read the mission statement of the list and I see that atmospheric
> CO2 sequestration is part of the scope of discussion. To combine all this is
> pretty broad.
>
Of course you are right; but the list is only about 8 weeks old so give us a
break!
Have you seen the Hypography forums and the Permaculture forums on TP?
SEE:
http://forums.hypography.com/terra-preta.html

There is a lot everyone does not know.
Thats why we are banging away at keyboards and lumps of charcoal
There is a lot of learning and research to be done.
TP has not hit public or even scientific consciousness yet like GW or AIDS
or wahtever. Hopefully the upcoming TP Confrence at Terrigal will lift it's
profile.

But sometimes you just know in your bones when something is right.

Michael Bailes
TP list moderator
2.26 AM
Cricket: 257 for 5
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