[Terrapreta] Real Carbon Offsets

[Duane Pendergast]

            Gerrit,

 

You are on to what I would consider a real "carbon offset" with your tonne
by tonne sinking of carbon releases from fossil fuel. We hear a lot about
buying and selling carbon offsets from many organizations. Most of those are
pretenders as they just ask you to pay for a tonne you already released
through your car exhaust or air travel for example. Most have no intention
of actually removing a tonne from the atmosphere. They would, for example,
have you believe that your money would go to running a wind turbine or
nuclear power plant - for example - and that somehow makes up for your one
tonne emission. I don't believe that can truly be considered an offset as
your tonne of carbon is still in the atmosphere.

 

Duane Pendergast

 

-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Gerald Van
Koeverden
Sent: September 23, 2007 5:36 PM
To: terrapreta preta
Cc: bhans at earthmimic.com
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] CO2 rising

 

What if Hans has hit upon something...that there is no meaningfully active
carbon sink in present geological history, just very extremely short
duration carbon-fixing mainly in grass roots and tree trunks?  And microbial
activity empties these very shallow sinks as quickly as they can be formed.
The true carbon sinks - coal formations and oil basins - are derived not
from trees or grasses but rather seas of algae grown in a high carbon
dioxide atmosphere and then buried in sediment by erosion and catastrophic
earth upheavels, eons ago... 

 

 If Hans' idea has validity, our only real choice would be make those sinks
ourselves, atom by atom...to return the atmosphere earth to pre-industrial
condition.  For every ton of fossil carbon fuel burned, we should we fixing
another ton back into a real sink...and is that the earth as charcoal??

 

Gerrit

 

 

 

 

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