[Terrapreta] Global Carbon Cycle

[Ron Larson]

Hi Sean (cc Christoph and all terra preta list members) - again - notes below.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org ; Christoph Steiner ; Ron Larson 
  Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 2:16 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Global Carbon Cycle


  Hi Ron,

  Way too cool!  You would like to jump in and collaborate on a report like this.  Thanks Ron, I'd really enjoy your help and advice.  I think others in the group here would still give us any more information of this type and we could compile it in a report of sorts.

  I'd like to start out with an outline of the report, presented here first, so we can can a better idea of what kind of information we are at all interested in.  We can add, delete, or modify it, with input from the group, before we compile the report.  I don't have a draft this outline entirely as yet, but I will put some semblance of one together.  When I finish writing one, I'll send it to you, Ron.  After your review, we can post it here, for comments from the group.

  There are a lot of things going on in published papers I have read.  Sources, bibliography, analysis, possible new research, editing, and etc.  I try hard at writing, but I am not doing all of the things required for research quality writing.  Postings are one thing, but I would like this report to have a lot more documentation and analysis behind it.  I don't know how long to make it or hold long it might take to write it, but I suppose that depends somewhat on what we want the report to cover.  
      RWL:  I like the idea of this being a project open to everyone getting to our site (wikipedia style) - and am thankful for your taking the lead.  This is a good time to iron out differences of opinion.


  Change of subject:

  You say,

  "4.  The area I have found most confusing and I have not seen in your summary so far relates to the multiplier that we should place on added future biomass growth due to charcoal sequestration.".

  I just recently have been thinking more about that, too, since I have written it into some statements here.  In the paper I quoted, I think it said 132 Gt of new growth and 120+ Gt of decomposition.  I'm thinking these numbers are very close, on the scale of things.  In fact, I'd bet these numbers are more likely to be darn near equal.  The basic amounts of land and ocean and plants has not grown or shrunk much in eons.  These two are in balance.  I say this, because the Earth's natural environment is very mature, and it's likely to have achieved some sort of stabile equalization of inputs/outputs by now.

  With that in mind, I then thought, well the 6 Gt of new/old carbon we are pumping up into the atmosphere is NOT making more plants grow and uptake more CO2?!  Where does the carbon naturally go in the sustained environment?  It came from buried in the ground.  It's got to go back, because it's no good in the atmosphere.  The CO2 is going to choke the life off of this planet, if we keep putting more and more into the atmosphere.
  We need to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere, period!  The atmosphere and the natural fauna are beyond saturation with gaseous CO2.  The plant growth doesn't seem to uptake the CO2 anymore.  It's just getting hotter, too hot in the kitchen (Earth).  Maybe not for plants, but probably for people.

  Additionally, I read somewhere (I think in a permaculture kind of article) that the classic, very old landform called Savanna is the kind of land that humans have put into cultivation ever since the dawn of agriculture.  Savanna WAS ONCE, the most photo-synthetically productive type of terra-form!  Now, all agricultural land, that humans built, uses less CO2 than it did before we started.

  We dug a BIG damned hole!  We threw all the carbon (CO2, CH4) and N2O we could up into the air.  We killed off the most productive land we could (for taking CO2 out of the air), where we grow our palsy little crops, that can't yet feed the world or clear the atmosphere of all the choking carbon.  Now, too, our stinking pits called agricultural land, are gassing off even more into the atmosphere, with nitrous oxide loss from industrial fertilizer, and methane from animal manure.  We till it up and throw it more and more into the atmosphere every day year round.

  This Terra Preta thing has an obvious natural balance thing to it.  We took carbon from the ground, mining out the fossil fuels (dense carbon).  We put it into the air, by burning it.  Turn 180 degrees, people!  Take carbon from the plants, which have taken it from the air.  Put it back into the ground (as dense carbon charcoal into the soil).  The plant material taken will have new plant growth come in after it and it will respire more CO2 from the air.  When we do this fast enough, the soil (ground), holding the natural carbon again, primarily this time as soil organic carbon, and some excess more pure carbon (kind of like charcoal replaces the old coal or oil carbon in the ground), will again begin to thrive.  The plants and animals living in and on that soil will have less CO2 and heat in the atmosphere to deal with,  The Earth will have its ground (soil?, mine?)-to/from-atmosphere carbon cycle restored once again.

  In summary, the realization that I have made is that we won't get carbon out of the atmosphere, or get the plants to take carbon out of the atmosphere, until we get some of the carbon out of the plants and put it back into the ground.  Does this make any sense to anyone else?

  More on this later.  I gotta take a breather.
      [RWL - lots of valuable additions above, Sean - but I had something very different in mind with my point #4.  I was thinking (apologies since I didn't say this) of the decision process for a potential purchaser of charcoal to place on the land under his/her control.  They must consider not just the next year or two, but rather even longer term production and/or the potential change in land value should they choose to sell.  My reference to John Gaunt (I also said: In one of Johannes Lehmann's papers (details from me coming later), he attributes a multiplier of three to eleven to work by his collaborator at Cornell: John Gaunt.  I talked to John at the IAI conference - and believe the result to be likely credible - but no details on the methodology used have yet appeared.  This is a huge factor, with probably the greatest present level of uncertainty.  But the TP in Brazil tells me that over thousands of years that a factor of 11 is on the low side.)  was meant to get at this first individual transaction.  If we can prove that there will be a 20% increase in soil productivity for a particular piece of land and a certain charcoal application - we must not leave the 20% number in the potential user's mind.  If his/her time scale is 10 years then 1.2^10 = 6.2 (more income) is what we should be emphasizing.  If this potential purchaser's time frame is 20 years, we can emphasize 6.2^2= 38 times the apparent return for 1 year.  The above assumes we can produce charcoal from the land; if not planned, maybe we talk about (1.2-1)*10 = 2.  

      If two pieces of land next to each other and otherwise very similar have a 20% difference in productivity (and we could be talking 100%), I believe that with the 20% (100%) higher annual productivity will have a cost ($/ha) differential greater than 20% (100%).  Anyone able to supply a statistic on this - or on the right way to make a point about long term productivity gain?

      Somewhat the same problem exists for the "UN appraiser" - as certainly there is a lot more out-year carbon growth and sequestration than that initially placed in the ground.  Can he/she think multi-year or only give later subsidies as those actually appear?

      I believe this "multiplier" methodology is going to be one of the harder points to make in our proposed "Wikipedia on TP issues" and will be critical in getting agreement between the parties ("UN" and land-owner) - each trying to pay as little as possible to get charcoal in the ground - and together bidding against the charcoal's use for ("only" carbon-neutral, and therefore with some potential carbon credit) energy purposes.   Sorry to only be raising a problem - and not giving a solution. I hope this is an adequate first explanation of this proposed addition to our list of topics to discuss.

  Ron


  Regards,

  SKB


  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Ron Larson 
    To: Sean K. Barry ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org ; Christoph Steiner 
    Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 1:58 PM
    Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Global Carbon Cycle


    Sean -

        1.  Thanks for taking the lead on this.  In response to your request below,  I'd like to work on this data summary 

            <snip big amount again>
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