[Terrapreta] Making charcoal in a barrel

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Dave K,

I said this guys heart is in the right place, but his methods are not clearly thought out.  He should not propose the simplicity of making charcoal in a barrel, outside, will save the world.  On a massive scale, actions taken like this will plummet the world even faster.  Making a few barrels full of charcoal to put into a garden probably does not count as a huge up-tick the global emissions of green house gases.  Doing research, putting charcoal into soil, which has made by any method is a benefit to the 'Terra Preta' cause.

It is not the act of making some charcoal in a barrel, it is the promotion of the principle which does not make sense.

As for the nom-de-plume; do you think I should adopt "ArrogantSOB" ?

Regards,

SKB
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: code suidae<mailto:codesuidae at gmail.com> 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 3:24 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Making charcoal in a barrel


  On 9/23/07, Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>> wrote:
  > Any of these kinds of videos, where the person has a moniker (e.g. Greenjack?!) and
  > no real name given seems somewhat suspect to me.

  Certainly you can maintain this illusion if you wish, but be aware
  that you will be dismissing the content of a great number of 'books'
  because of your irrational aversion to the modern use of the /nom de
  plume/ rather than the merit of the information contained therein.

  To the original point:
  > If you make biochar in a barrel you are contributing to global warming, not being part of the solution.

  I'd really like to see more support for this position. Presuming that
  the gases produced are at least partially flared off and that the char
  is used as a soil amendment to increase the yield of the makers
  garden, I wonder how long it takes to offset the effect of the gases
  that were produced? One must take into account that the soil will last
  for many years and that for at least some of this time it will be
  yielding a quantity of food beyond what it would otherwise have
  produced. Over the years this food represents some quantity of miles
  not driven, plastic bags not consumed, produced not trucked, acres not
  harvested, planted or tilled by diesel tractor and fertilized by
  fossil fuel.

  I don't even have an order-of-magnitude calculation for this, but it
  seems to me that if a few barrel-fulls of char represent a quantity of
  GHG's sufficient to outstrip the emissions avoided  by the garden
  enhanced by the char, well, then we really are over a barrel.

  <insert ID here>
  -- 
  "Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." -
  M. King Hubbert

  _______________________________________________
  Terrapreta mailing list
  Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar/<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar/>
  http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org<http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/>
  http://info.bioenergylists.org<http://info.bioenergylists.org/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/attachments/20070924/e648faef/attachment.html