[Terrapreta] Terrapreta Digest, Vol 4, Issue 188

[Rhisiart Gwilym]

Siwmae eto,

In Kevin's message,  copied below, he concludes that just coal 
mining, in the US alone, is so massive that charcoal sequestration as 
part of terra preta agriculture can only have a small effect to 
mitigate this release of fossil carbon. But this assumes that general 
economic activity will continue and even grow greater from its 
present level.

If there's one thing on which I'd take a serious bet, it's that that 
can't happen for much longer. On a finite planet, we accept that 
endless growth is impossible, or we drive the whole damn' train over 
the cliff and into the canyon. The great Western god 'Economic 
Growth' is about to be toppled, like Saddam's statue; whether we like 
it or not, whether we agree or not.

My hunch is that we, as a species, will not opt to do wise and 
cautious things in the way we live on this planet until we have been 
scared shitless by the  upcoming global catastrophes. This process of 
scaring us will probably include mass dieoffs, in several waves, of 
large numbers of humans, including plenty currently living in the 
delusional dreamworld of the Pampered Twenty Percent.

If you assume that global warming doesn't then go off on a positive 
feedback ramp which fries and sterilises the entire planet, like 
Venus, (which damn' near happened at the end of the Permian Era) then 
there will be human survivors of these catastrophes. However, I think 
that the level of their economic activity might have reduced a little 
by then. Probably it will have altered its nature a little also.

To focus in on the US in particular, I suspect that you may see a 
considerable contraction in US fossil carbon burning, as the upcoming 
US economic collapse crunches demand and disrupts business chains. It 
seems quite possible too that the questionable integrity of the US 
electrical grid -- to put it kindly -- might bring about a drop in 
demand, as it unravels.

Meanwhile, wherever in the world there are survivors, they will be 
attempting to do agriculture, just to keep from starving. And if by 
then they have seen the sterling virtues of terra preta soil-making, 
and of doing agriculture with permaculture techniques (another idea 
whose time is almost here) they'll be  using those methods, without 
any ideological or commercial incentive, simply because they must.

When trying to intuit how things may play out from here into the near 
future, it may help listees to get things into a global and 
medium-to-long term perspective by making a visit to Jay Hanson's 
ultimately grim 'Dieoff' website (dieoff.org). From brief 
e-conversations with him, I would say that Jay is unduly pessimistic 
and overly-deterministic (he's temperamentally disinclined to accept 
that the universe always throws wild cards into our games, and that 
absolute human certainty will never be attainable). But Dieoff places 
some deeply sobering approaching realities before us, which are 
coming to get us, I think, whether we choose to see them in advance 
or not.

I still think it's a good idea to go on with the practical 
development and spread of terra preta and permaculture techniques in 
our food growing. We're going to need them. And the carbon 
sequestration, and the alleviation of nitrate and methane effects, 
inherent in making terra preta can have a crucial effect on how bad 
climate perturbation gets.

Cofion,    RhG

QUOTE:

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 09:33:05 -0300
From: Kevin Chisholm <kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Charcoal agriculture: not ready for prime
	time
To: Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>
Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Message-ID: <465C1D81.9080101 at ca.inter.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Dear Tom

Thanks very much for your clear example that puts a perspective on the
extent of present carbon additions to the Biosphere.

Basically, if all the available Biomass in the US was turned into
charcoal and buried, it would "neutralize" about 40% of the carbon
additions resulting from US coal. Carbon contributions from oil are
extra. Burying charcoal is clearly not the solution to the US
contribution to global warming.

Eliminating the other 60% of the carbon additions could be accomplished
by eliminating about 60% of present coal consumption. That is not going
to happen willingly.

For the most part, energy conservation only occurs willingly if there is
a financial return, typically with a Simple Payback Period of up to
about 3 to 5 years.

It is hard to imagine any significant circumstance where there would be
a 3-5 year payback period on a program to recover biomass, convert it to
charcoal, and then bury the charcoal for the sole purpose of
sequestering carbon.

The simplest way to solve a problem (excess carbon being introduced to
the Biosphere) is to eliminate it in the first place (Conserve)

There seems to be solid evidence that charcoal additions to the soil
have no detrimental effects, and that they can have positive effects, as
Terra Preta.

I would conclude as follows:
1: Burying charcoal cannot neutralize or reverse the US carbon additions
to the Biosphere resulting from consumption of fossil fuels at the
present rate.
2: Terra Preta's greatest potential benefit is as an agricultural
supplement, and its contribution to the alleviation of Global Warming
will, at the best, be a second order benefit.
3: The only solution to that portion of Global Warming resulting from
utilization of fossil fuels by Man is to reduce the rate of fossil fuel
utilization by Man.

Scary, huh?

Kevin
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