[Terrapreta] Google Alert - terra preta

[lou gold]

I think that we should simply note it as a significant disservice to the
movement and let that message fly. The troll bait is to respond directly. We
should not be so foolish.



On Dec 12, 2007 9:02 AM, Michael Bailes <michaelangelica at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am resisting an intense urge to reply to this.
> The list might like to let fly ?!
>
>  *terra preta*
>
>  Subsistence Charcoal<http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html>
>  By arclein(arclein)
> I must say that the *terra preta* group on bionet.org has continued to
> steadily increase its traffic. I have recently been bombarded with nearly 40
> messages a day and I have over 1000 messages that have gone unread. *...*
>  Global Warming - http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/
> <http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/>
>
> ------------------------------
> Tuesday, December 11, 2007  Subsistence Charcoal<http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html> I
> must say that the terra preta group on bionet.org has continued to
> steadily increase its traffic. I have recently been bombarded with nearly 40
> messages a day and I have over 1000 messages that have gone unread. Most of
> the action has been around various efforts to pursue aspects of pyrolysis in
> a modern setting.
>
> I have seen no alternative to the corn culture earthen kiln approach that
> I have proposed a few months back.
>
> Since then we have seen film on the production of subsistence charcoal in
> Africa and it is very instructive. Firstly, in the modern world, everyone
> can get their hands on an axe and a simple saw. This makes it easy to hack
> everything down and to cut it up. Making this woody waste into charcoal is
> quite another matter.
>
> It fails to pack well but the charcoalers are still able to create pits
> and to throw dirt on the burning pile to suppress the flames. This obviously
> will produce some charcoal, but the yield must be terrible. what is clear
> though is that the produced wood charcoal is poorly charcoaled at best. We
> see people carrying bundles of charred sticks and bulky bags of char. It
> makes great fuel. It is almost impossible to use as a soil additive.
>
> Whatever lingering thoughts that I may have had in support of the
> charcoaling of wood for soil remediation can be laid to rest. Only a modern
> industrial grade charcoaler might be able to produce suitable material.
>
> Subsistence  farmers<http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html#>could not even begin to make wood waste work for them. They needed a helper
> crop. That was provided in the form of corn to the Amazon Indians.
>
> I also think that wood charcoal was always too valuable as a fuel as is
> true today in Africa, to ever be crushed and folded into the seedbed. In
> fact a man load of charcoal probably weighs a hundred pounds and needs be
> carried miles back to town. That one hundred pounds needed about one ton of
> source material to be cut down and stacked and covered with dirt while
> burning. Maybe they did twice as good in terms of yield. However it worked,
> that man load of charcoal took two days of labor input at the least.
>
> There is simply no way that such a production model could be used to
> produce terra preta. And the Indians did not have steel tools.
>
> FROM:
>
>
> http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/12/subsistence-charcoal.html
>
> --
> Michael the Archangel
>
> "You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . .
> Most people don't know that"
> FROM
> http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf
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-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com/
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