[Terrapreta] Soil test and CEC

[Jim Joyner]

Sean,

Sorry, you missed my point completely (Thank you Lou, you didn't). If this discussion about Terra Preta has any significance to the environment at all, getting some good out of it is almost wholly dependent enlisting farmers (last I looked, no one else would be interested in making and burying charcoal). I can tell you from experience with farmers, they are not going to be swayed by how many scientists you can get on the head of a pin, hoary-gory stories about flooding and famine or moral allegations as to whose fault is all is. It's all about their pocket books. Maybe it shouldn't be but that's the way it is.

I said, carbon sequestration is a good bet even if it is not the cause of global warming. Reducing atmospheric CO2 is still a good thing. If nothing else it takes a variable out of the growing equation. And, if farmers world-wide find some reason to bury carbon, we will be asking them or someone to bare the economic burden of doing so.
If, however, burying carbon makes soils better, that burden is considerably
reduced if, indeed, there is a burden at all..

Farmers are not egghead intellectuals who are going to sit around theorizing. They are going to want to know this technology is going to improve their soils, get the gov't off their backs, maybe make it easier for them to adapt to what ever is coming and give them a better living. So, soil improvement is what our knowledge of Terra Preta is all about. Every thing else, as far as this farmer can see, is just parlor chatter.

Regards,

Jim

From: Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com>
 
Green House Gases are the bulk of that air pollution you speak of and they 
have a greater impact on temperatures in the troposphere than any other 
mechanism, including current and historical solar activity and cosmic rays 
(which are completely unaffected by solar activity).  The resulting 
climatic changes, including global warming, increased incidence and severity of 
droughts, 3 category 5 hurricanes in one annual seasons, are a direct result of 
human activities which introduce ~6 billion tons of new carbon into the 
atmosphere each year.   This is not an issue which politicians seem 
willing to address (unfortunately).

 

There are 1500+ scientists, global climatologists, having done thousands of 
research projects and written thousands of peer reviewed articles where they are 
in COMPLETE CONSENSUS that global warming is caused primarily by humans.  
There has never ANY CRITICISM of even one peer reviewed article, written by any 
scientists in the past ten years, which stated that global warming was caused by 
humans.   This is no longer conjecture.  It has not been 
conjecture in the scientific community for a very long time.

 

We humans must BEAR the cost of fixing this or we will suffer the 
consequences.  We are the only living beings that can do ANYTHING to change 
the world.  Even if we do something to mitigate the problems in our 
environment, we will have to adapt.  The ball is already rolling.  
It's a big ball with lots of inertia.  The hysteresis lag in the response 
of the environment to activities that we do is on the order of a 100 
years.  We are now seeing the effects of what we did 100 years ago.  
In 100 years more we will still be seeing the effects of what we are doing now, 
even if we try to make amends for it.  We will absolutely be required to 
adapt before then!

 

Regards,

 

SKB





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