[Terrapreta] Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Code (DOK?),

You, accidentally quoted Kurt quoting me (or he accidentally quoted me quoting him) (i.e. not my quote).  It's his damned fault anyway, with his "EDIT YOUR BLOODY QUOTES!!!" campaign.  Right, Kurt? :D

...
On 6/4/07, rukurt at westnet.com.au<mailto:rukurt at westnet.com.au> <rukurt at westnet.com.au<mailto:rukurt at westnet.com.au>> wrote: 
Sean K. Barry wrote:
It's really quite simple. It appears that the most effective form of 
charcoal comes from hardwoods. Todate, we have no conclusive evidence
that other forms of charcoal will do the job. ...

Now you said,

... I have an idea I like to call the "You can't get there from here" principle. ...

I like this idea of yours, Code.  It's the observation of a kind of a hysteresis in the attainment of an equilibrium.  It's what PID (proprotional, integral, derivative) designs are built for the control of.  It takes time and possibly a whole wild assortment of equilibrium seeking changes (even blunders and missed cues) for a biological ecology to work its way out.  That is what we should be (are?) focusing on talking about, too; ecology, not industry.  

Human industry needs to fit in as a sub-part of the global ecology.  All that we can do to "take back the entropy", in as multiply varied ways as we can, and as much as we can, will eventually join with "Mother Nature", as part of it, to bring the carbon balance on the planet to back to some equilibrium.  We need to watch out that this is a livable equilibrium state for us (lest Earth will kill us off, as a blunder, to support the survival of the planet).

Now, all we humans are doing is fighting against her.  We are disorganizing the world (burning is increasing entropy) much faster now, in a shorter period of time, in a world where she organized the "carbon balance" some time ago.  It was an environment which could have lasted much longer, and it is the one which has sustained our lives for our whole existence as a species.

Did you know that the universal tendency of everything is towards higher entropy (disorganization) rather than lower entropy (less disorganization = organization)?  Yet, in this universe there are myriad islands of "life" and living places, like our planet Earth, and plants, insects, animals, and us, where nature and life fight against the "disorganization" to organize "a living life" in an ever disorganizing world.  We need to join the "living" and re-ORGANIZE our world, so we can live in it.  It looks like "The Carbon Thing" is way out of balance.  It could do for some more swinging back the other way.  It is a BIG BIG JOB, but if we look we around in our world, we can see how it is done elsewhere, and try to begin to "live" like we are actually seeing and appreciating what we can learn the other "living" around us.

Clue #1: We "lived" in a healthier world before we took nearly half of the carbon that "Mother Nature" had put into the ground, and then burned it all up into the atmosphere.  So, maybe we ought to learn from the master herself and put the carbon back out of the atmosphere and into the ground.  Science and "Life" are full of symmetries.  We can act like Mother Nature acts, join the team as it were, or blindly not observe the realities, and perish as a result.

There is mighty inertia in nature and we will have to work hard and closely at areas of our ecology here. It may be a very long time before the full effects of our work will have been realized.  I think I have to grapple with the science and engineering of the thing.  That's my instinct.  I'm trying to find the carbon gradient in the environment and gain better control of it.  I want to engineer a system to effect a change in it, to slow it down, and discover where and hence it goes, and to use that information to manage it better, or change the flow.

... This is the principle that makes me skeptical of the concern individuals who do biochar research have for flaring off the waste gases. The impact the production of personal or research quantities of biochar, even if done in stupidly inefficient ways is insignificant when considered next to the production of GHG's from the rest of civilization. On a personal level it is admirable to strive for low impact, but ...

I'm in total agreement with you on this.  But, I'm not touting that I am trying to "Save the World" by "flaring off" the out gases from my research gasifier.  I am trying to design an engineered system, based on scientific evidence, theories, and experiment, that will mine carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and sink it in the ground, for the benefit of the Living Earth and the Living Us.  "Flaring" or using the GHG gases emitted from a charcoal kiln is not a solution in total to Global Warming.  I think it's an important step in the right direction, though.  I believe any workable charcoal making design, that is made to be used on a worldwide scale, needs to include this feature of operation.  If we don't do this, then we will be slowly paddling up a swift river of GHG, which will be flowing into the atmosphere.  We could bury all the graphite paddles be busted doing it, too.  It still wouldn't help.

... If one wastes time and cognitive resources trying to make zero-impact biochar in order to avoid the relatively piffling quantities of GHG's produced, one is not progressing toward the goal of learning how to make biochar solve the much larger problems at hand. ...

You miss the objectives of my statements.  If I just wanted to build and sell as many charcoal making kilns (of any design that I could find), then I wouldn't waste any of my piffling quantities of cognitive resources and I'd "just do it".  If I actually "progressed somewhere" with this and sold and put many of them into utilization, so that many could make charcoal, and attempt to make "Neo Terra Preta", well then I definitely WOULD BE doing the world a true disservice.  It would way NOT be focused on the goal, but rather on the filthy lucre.  I could be making cheap charcoal kilns, that do more damage than all the charcoal you could make, but, and/or bury with them, and selling them at "rock bottom" prices.

Instead, I mull it over and think about how to make the "best" kind of kiln to solve the problem; the most effective and least expensive, so I can still seel lots of them.  My cognitive resources focus on this problem differently than you.  I do not waste them progressing no where.  My cognitive resources are those of an engineer (I'm an engineer).  It's just the way I think about this stuff.

I'm sticking with (but adjusting) my mantra ...  "Flare off or use the GHG gases" ...  "Flare off or use the GHG gases" ...

... Or, to pull in some cross-disciplinary wisdom from my field, computer science, I'll quote Donald Knuth's restatement of Tony Hoare's insight, sometimes called "Hoare's Dictum": "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." This refers to the computer programmer's predilection to spend lots of time tweaking areas of a system that, while in the development stages of a system might appear to be a problem, really aren't. 

Of course, that whole paragraph is completely beside the point, but since I managed to work in the word 'piffling', I think I'll keep it :D ...

DOK

 
I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, from the University of Minnesota, Institute of Technology, 1986.  I have been fully employed working in (and still do some part-time consulting/contracting) as a professional software engineer for 20+ years, mostly writing embedded firmware for medical devices.   I've read that quote from Knuth's book and, as a former software engineering manager/project manager, I think I know just what you are talking about.  I spend about half my time not working for anybody else now.  I work for Troposphere Energy, LLC with that spare time.  I do more now, the way I learned from working, and more than when I worked the way anyone told me to before.

For the two most recent years, since I started my company, Troposphere Energy, LLC, I have been writing firmware for a company that makes a "Power Inverter/Battery Charger" system.  I designed all of the new firmware for this system.  I have written all of it in C, so far by myself.  I started with some hackers' native-assembly-written, prototype firmware, that tried to do the "Inverter" operation.

Now, we are way past 97% of the time that it is going to take to get this system to market (it's through Beta testing and into pre-production manufacturing).  Things like surge power capacity, power feedback and A/C output cirection, calibrated battery voltage and shunt current measurements, "tare power" measurement, "tare power" reduction, sleep mode operation, inter-device communication, and two whole other sets of devices and firmware were NOT THERE at first, or in the first prototypes I had running.  The "Charger" and the "User Interface" had not been specified, let alone prototyped, circuit designs or layouts done, or firmware written for either.  These are all now there and close to done ...

I kind of think of them, like "Flare off or use the GHG gases" types of issues in the design of this machine.  I have seen that and many other technological, detailed designs go from concept to myriad refinements.  Some, that have actually never even stopped yet, on being continuously refined.

I do not know how long you have looked at any of the scientific or engineering issues related to Terra Preta, charcoal production, GHGs, or Global Warming.  I've looked at many of these issues very hard, and for well many years (since college and especially hard in the last two years, since forming Troposphere Energy, LLC).  From what I've read and learned, I am well along the curve on the science and design issues.  This may not be true at all, but it feels like it to me, and the details I am working on and what I am thinking about sure seem like ... I am in a "refinement" stage.


Regards and keep :D


SKB
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