[Terrapreta] Google Alert - terra preta

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Michael

Michael Bailes wrote:
> I am resisting an intense urge to reply to this.
> The list might like to let fly ?!
You seem to be suggesting that the content of the posting is wrong or 
out to lunch. I would be really interested in what you see as being 
seriously wrong or flawed.

Best wishes,

Kevin

>  *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 
> <http://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 
> <http://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
>
>