[Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

[Tom Miles]

How much are you willing to pay?$200/ton of carbon (charcoal)?

 

$200/ton C x 4 tons per person per year x 300,000,000 people = $240 billion.
That's the value of all the fossil fuels we import each year, or about half
the cost of the Iraq war, by the time you read the morning paper.
http://costofwar.com/ Let's spend the money at home.

 

It's  about three times our annual farm production expenditures.  We spend
$10 billion per year on farm fuels and about $20 billion per year on
chemicals and fertilizers. Can we decrease our farm inputs and increase our
agricultural productivity by using terra preta? We run a positive
agricultural trade balance of about $6 billion per year.  Can we increase
our international competitiveness by investing in our own resources?

 

It starts with  settling our carbon account at home.

 

Tom

 

 

From: Sean K. Barry [mailto:sean.barry at juno.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:36 PM
To: still.thinking at computare.org; Tom Miles
Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

 

Hi Tom,

 

You pointed this out earlier; we do not have the resources in this country
alone to clean up the carbon we have already released into the atmosphere or
even come close to keeping up with the carbon we will release in the future.
If we intend to do anything to fix just our contribution to what is a
worldwide problem, then we MUST engage the rest of the world and get their
help.  Our survival as a country or even as a species, is very questionable
if we do not cooperate.  We have to pay.  Our willful polluting ways "have
come home to roost".  Paying others outside this country now for their help,
might just make this the smallest of the problems we will have to face.

 

SKB

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Tom Miles <mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>  

To: 'Sean K. Barry' <mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>  ;
still.thinking at computare.org 

Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:23 PM

Subject: RE: [Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

 

So we'll be hostage to whoever we're in debt to for carbon? Russia perhaps?
We've tried to do a JI/CDM project in Russia. We wanted to use the value of
the carbon credits to build local renewable energy projects. The government
has to authorize the sale of the credits to foreign governments. They want
50% or nothing. Guess who benefits? When everyone gets their piece there is
not enough value left in the carbon credit to do the project. Bolivia has
been the same. It's all about politics and nothing to do with environment.
Countries are better off managing their own carbon to live within their
(our) environmental means. 


Tom

   

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Tom Miles <mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com>  

To: still.thinking at computare.org ; 'Sean K. <mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>
Barry' 

Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 1:57 PM

Subject: RE: [Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

 

When you do your personal calculations you'll find anything from 8-15 tpy
CO2 emissions, at 0.3 tC/tCO2 (~3.33 tCO2/tC) that's 2.4-6 tpy. That was the
purpose of my calculation of the area required for applying carbon.  At 5-10
t/ha (2-4 t/a) that's about 1 acre (4 tC) per person per year.  

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/carbondioxide

 

It makes sense to invest in carbon sequestration through productive
agriculture at the rate of 1 acre (4t) per person/year. At a US population
of 302,011,659 (at 18:52 GMT (EST+5) Jun 05, 2007) that's 302 million acres
per year or about 1.2 billion tons of charcoal per year. At 25% net yield of
charcoal that's 4.8 million tons of biomass or more than 4 times what the
USDOE says we have available for energy.   

 

Tom

 

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