[Terrapreta] Forests as sinks & a huge inroduction

[geoff moxham]

Hi Lou, Duane, Tom, Ed, many others,
 I can barely keep up with this lists rapid repartee... but the issues
of the survival of  rainforest and carbon sequestration are
fundamentally dear to me, so I am posting, not lurking.
Much of what you write, Lou, resonates with my experience.

Forests are definitley the most delightful carbon sinks there are.
I have lived in a forest community at Terania Creek for 23 years,
Our Intentional community adjoins the state forest, and the World
Heritage Nightcap National Park is just 3 km down the road.
The Terania Creek protest was the first successful protection by
protest, of rainforest in the world. It paved the way for many other
actions around the world , the RIC, the rise of green action groups,
and was the cause celebre of the dozens of communities in the Nimbin
region. I'm proud to say I was there at that protest.
It worked because climax forests change people who go in
them....especially the police  and politicians in this case...

One tree we saved was a 1400 year old brushbox. There were many other
trees too exquisite for just these words. It is my experience that
climax rainforests are constantly turning over, but a 2m diameter
trunk takes a very long time to decay to the centre, so easily a
mature tree here would last 2000 years for C sequestration.
 Our community has a tree problem from over-care, and trees, now
giants smashing our cars and houses, have to be lopped. Instant char
source!
It is with some chagrin that I watch my 2yo son copy my chainsaw
technique. From viridian to realist. My chainsaw will be my last
fossil fool tool to go. Way too useful.

I wrote a Biochar article 2 months ago for the Terania Times and will
try to post it to the group's files. Agrichar? I thought someone
bought that .com? (Why did the IAI become the IBI?)  I have a problem
with the term terrapreta, apart from everyone saying wha?...it's that
it comes from a culture that destroyed a fine civilisation. Sure, they
knew not what not they did, but lets not celebrate it. I am trying to
think of it here as Jagabar Jagun...Bundjalung for black earth. It
certainly represents the UNIQUE biota signature of any given area, and
must surely be a fundamental source of wonder and spirited
reconciliation debate about "country".
Lou is right. We have to get on with it. Write On! Anticopyright.
Copynotwrong? We ARE the ones.

Oz ABC's Peter Cundall is doing a television  trial and the Charcoalab
looks like a great idea...but isn't 1/2 char too rich? And shouldn't
we make our own?

Cant write too much more as i have to char another 44 of thinnings.
We grind in a corn grinder, set on coarse. Don't grind wet char...it
flows like toothpaste. Hopeless.
Hessian sacks! Yes that's the answer for the driveway.... (the main
road?!) I was going to build a 1cm heavy mesh and trough arrangement.

Charcoal absorbs water well, especially when hot.
Wetting a fire worries me: about KOH absorption affecting biota taking
up residence so easily?
 We inoculate with compost and worm juice, and put char in our clivus
micromus toilet. We use 10 percent in the garden if we can make
enough.
We make a kitchen grade charcoal for our 12V PWM fan Midge
woodgasifier micro stove, which I am perfecting in stainless, and
adding a thermocouple (Peltier Effect Module) that should run its own
fan and maybe a light and a radio?
Will post pics.
Good ideas like these all need a good grassroots anticopyright movement.

Our local Permies are very aware of peakoil and are also doing biochar
research with weeds like lantana and crofton. Permaculturists are an
excellent network already sensitised.
Locally only a few people know of biochar, (apart from Lukas Van Swieten!)
 A local lopper-woodchipper service bloke pushes his trunks up in 6m
pile and chars them, then spreads it with the bulldozer. A bit
brutal...but everyone has an angle, and there's your incorporation in
the topsoil.

I think biochar could work if it's inoculated with worm food and
broadcast or aerial-seeded in pellets. I reckon the worms will then do
all the work, driving the minerals and biota up and down through the
horizons, and depositing biochar fines with their castings. I think
this is a credible explanation for the "renewing effect"...which seems
to have rather obvious limits to me, and approaches some kind of
philosophical asymptote as to dilution... and that leads to homeopathy
so lets not go there...
I am working on a 2m satellite dish reflector solar wood-cooker, to
make woodgas and ALL the charcoal! Only found 2 links, one at ANU for
this. I am also converting a Honda stationary motor to woodgas using
the Imbert type producer hearth, with some focus on recycling the
condensates to the high temp combustion zone to crack it all to CO2,
and thus avoid all the dramas with the EPA requirements for char
making. Many thanks to the yahoo woodgas group.

As it happened I went to secondary school with Stephen Joseph, who
went on to be founder of BEST. He was a cheery chap, and has done
well. However, I am intrigued that one of the partners he sold to, on
retiring, was Union Carbide.

We are preparing for inevitable energy descent now, while the plateau
decline is only 1-2 percent....while there is a bit of fossil about.
By 2010 world supply looks set to  enter the 4 -17 percent decline
zone.  This is when small scale local farming will shine again. And
Biochar will be there. Lucky it scales down so well.

Just used biochar for a new purpose: marking territory.  Last night I
poured our collective pee on it and steeped it for a day in the sun
then trailed it out around the new pumpkin bed the wallabies are
attacking. Should last longer than one pour-on.

Now that took 3 hours... all you lurkers out there...let's hear it from you.
Geoff Moxham
BSc Industrial Arts (Technology) UNSW 1977,
retired industrial arts teacher (US:"shop")
defiant ol hippie