[Terrapreta] Terra Preta Future Goals?
Mary Lehmann
mlehmann3 at austin.rr.com
Mon Apr 14 22:13:48 CDT 2008
We cannot have any more coal-fired plants. I don't see the means to
stop them except on a national level. My way is to work to see that
Barack Obama is elected. Immediately then we have to have a
classification of emergency levels, and I think that takes lobbying
at all levels. The country has to know we are in related stages of
an emergency before anything will happen.
Mary L.
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====
On Apr 14, 2008, at 5:58 PM, lou gold wrote:
> Hey Sean,
>
> China is adding a large coal-fired electricity generating plant at
> the rate of one per week.
>
> India just got world bank green light for one of the largest coal-
> fired plants ever built.
>
> Brazil announced today the discovery of what may be the third
> largest oil reserve in the world.
>
> etc, etc.
>
> How would you stop this? With war? With catastrophe? With an
> amazing new technology? But surely not with reason.
>
> My thought is a massive publicly-funded war on global warming
> (subsidies for retrofitting for energy efficiency, appropriations
> for R&D, etc) in order to head off a painful recession. In other
> words, start taxing again -- big time -- like in other wartime
> situations prior to Iraq. And gain popular support through all the
> jobs that can be created.
>
> lou
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Sean K. Barry
> <sean.barry at juno.com> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> Terra Preta Nova has to be on a massive world-wide industrial
> scale, like that of the biggest industries on the planet; mining,
> oil pumping, gas extraction, agriculture, transportation, etc. to
> even work. We already handle an estimated ~40 billion tons per
> year (I think, this number could be checked?) of waste biomass in
> all of agricultural production. Nothing is done with most of it
> but leave it to waste (net CO2 increase into the atmosphere).
> Nature is recycling ~120 billion tons of waste biomass carbon every
> year, too.
>
> To offset total worldwide annual fossil carbon emissions of ~6.3 Gt
> yr-1 to the atmosphere now, using just charcoal-in-soil, would
> require the production of ~3.1 tons of charcoal to put into soil,
> using ~12 Gt yr-1 of biomass (3.67 [w/w CO2/C] * ~3.1 GT yr-1).
> This 12 GT of biomass is out there, annually reproducing every year
> now (and decaying every year).
>
> Additionally, fossil fuel energy use must be immediately curtailed
> and here is important point. We cannot just let others do one in
> lieu of we do the the other here. I refer to the dirty little
> selfish game of someone else making charcoal so we can keep burning
> fossil fuels. This is the moral trap issue with carbon
> sequestration (and it is also the freaking business model of the
> Kyoto Protocol, if you think about it?). BOTH of these steps must
> be taken simultaneously and to the hilt, if we can. The situation
> demands it. The scientific evidence to date supports working
> theories that would predict a catastrophic outcome, if BOTH issues
> of carbon removal from the atmosphere (Terra Preta Nova style) and
> immediate curtailment of fossil fuel consumption aren't done on a
> vast scale, in a hurry. Some undesirable outcomes are even
> certain, even if we act large scale and decisively now. The set of
> outcomes without immediate widespread ACTION to combat GW/GCC are
> way not desirable for the vast population of the planet.
>
> Everyone is going to feel the effects from progressing GW/GCC.
> There will definitely be some who suffer more as a result of these
> outcomes.
> This can easily become "the moral question of our times". Do we
> ignore the plight of billions of people around us, to service ALL
> of our personal needs any longer? Or, do we recognize our correct
> behavior as world citizens and ALL of us combat GW/GCC with fervor
> and without selfishness, until the world is a better place to live
> in for everyone (even ourselves)? This seems an easy choice for me.
>
> Harvesting biomass for enough charcoal to bury fast enough plus
> provide some energy to replace the fossil fuels previously is a
> GREAT BIG JOB!
> It is a great big opportunity for energy providers that expect to
> be in business in the future, I think.
>
> Focusing on future goals and not stuck in analysis of "conjectures"
> about the past is a great idea, Joe. I like it.
>
> Regards,
>
> SKB
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: joe ferguson
> To: Sean K. Barry
> Cc: terra pretta group ; Robert Klein
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 4:49 PM
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Earthen Kiln Conjecture
>
> In reply to this thread, I've long ago concluded that for the C
> sequestration goal to be significant, it must be carried out on an
> industrial scale. By this I mean a scale comparable to the GWatt
> coal burning plants that are cropping up like daffodils in spring.
> And this scale of operation will require a refined process that
> captures all the by- and co-products, including liquid fuels, heat,
> possibly electricity, feedstocks for other processes, what have you.
>
> By all means carry out the necessary research to determine whether
> the pottery sherds are important for other aspects, such as the
> agricultural effects.
>
> But I don't think we'll get anywhere by trying to reconstruct the
> specific process used by the ancients. I will posit that there
> were several variations on the process developed by them depending
> upon where they were in the development cycle, and depending very
> much upon the materials and capabilities available to each
> individual village that was involved.
>
> Let us focus on the goals.
>
> Joe Ferguson
>
> Sean K. Barry wrote:
>> Hi Robert,
>>
>> Again with this post. Whatever the Indios did to make charcoal
>> out of whatever they used DOES NOT MATTER TODAY! When are you
>> going to grasp this? Recommending to make charcoal in earthen
>> kilns (in the open air) made from corn stalks is a bad idea.
>> There is no way to do this without massive releases of Methane-
>> CH4, which has been discussed ad-nauseum with you as a significant
>> potential problem with this plan. Also, just like there isn't
>> enough corn grown in the world to make enough ethanol to supply
>> the world's thirst for transportation fuel, there IS NOT ENOUGH
>> CORN STALKS IN THE WORLD to make the amount of charcoal we need to
>> form enough Terra Preta and/or make any kind of difference on
>> agricultural food production or global climate mitigation.
>>
>> Move on. Your past one idea (Earthen Kiln Conjecture) is too
>> limited and problematic to be a solution or of any value to us,
>> Robert. That's my opinion and widely held in this group, I think.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> SKB
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Robert Klein
>> To: terra pretta group
>> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 1:14 PM
>> Subject: [Terrapreta] Earthen Kiln Conjecture
>>
>> Ihave reposted an article by David Bennet with Lehmann on Terra
>> Preta publishedin 2005. This outlines the most
>> criticalinformation as well as describing the original scope of
>> the Indian civilizationitself. It is at:http://globalwarming-
>> arclein.blogspot.com/2008/04/earthen-terra-preta-kilns-and-
>> pollen.htmlAgainthis lays out the limiting factors and fully
>> supports my earthen kilnconjecture, particularly the following
>> quotation."There has been some pollen analysis. It suggests manioc
>> and maize were
>> being grown 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. In the pollen bank, these
>> crops didn't
>> pop up sporadically but in large numbers."
>> Ihave also polished my description of the protocol and am
>> activelypromoting field trials.Firstly,the maize or corn exists
>> in an environment that mitigated against its use forpurely food
>> production. There werealternatives far better suited. to the non
>> terra preta environment, startingimmediately with manioc which I
>> think is a rainforest friendly plant. Secondly,the only viable
>> source of meat protein to these peoples at this populationdensity
>> was through fish. Withoutconfirmation, a pond with tilapia makes
>> great sense. It was a staple for the Maya.The waste from the daily
>> meal could be readily folded into any growing seedhill. Human
>> waste could simply have beenburied in the field itself avoiding
>> any storage. This is common practice to this day. Themaking of
>> the earthen kiln is no more difficult than uprooting the
>> dehydratedcorn stalks after harvest and properly stacking them to
>> form an earthen walledkiln with a wall thickness of two to
>> three root pads
>> and an interior of tightlypacked corn stalks. Obviously, any
>> otherplant material, including wood can be built into the stack as
>> available. The earthen wall nicely restricts air flowduring the
>> burn phase and lends itself to optimization by changing the
>> wallthickness. It also minimizes the amountof human effort needed
>> which is through the roof if you are attempting to coveror bury a
>> ten ton pile of stubble or branches. Thisgives you a kiln with
>> vertical earthen walls and a possibly domed top that canbe easily
>> covered with earth. Again,field trials will optimize this
>> protocol very easily. The kiln could be squared off or perhaps
>> evencircular though unlikely. The only tool to this point is a
>> strong back ortwo. We have gathered several tons ofcorn stover
>> over perhaps an acre of land with only a little more effort
>> thanthat annually required to clear the field and burn the waste.
>> Nowwe must fire the kiln. The easy way isto take a clay lined old
>> basket
>> and fill it up with coals from a woodfire. Carry this ember
>> charge to thecenter of the kiln top and tip the charge onto the
>> exposed center and place thebasket as a cap to the newly forming
>> chimney.
>> More clay may be necessary to widen the chimney cap. Throw more
>> earth on top of this to preventbreakout of the fire. Keep
>> throwingearth on any breakout points that start.
>> The chimney will serve to burn all the volatiles produced as the
>> hotzone expands to fill the collapsing kiln until they are
>> exhausted. Thereupon the hot zone will cool off leavinga blend of
>> biochar, ash and earth and some root ends for the next kiln. And
>> yes, we should have a lot of fired clay. Thebiochar itself will be
>> a range of nonvolatile combustion products that willrange from
>> even dried vegetation to activated charcoal following a nice
>> bellcurve. The material can be then gatheredin baskets and
>> redistributed into the field onto the seed hills again
>> reducingwastage and effort. Irealized originally that the only
>> ancient plant that could accommodate a highenough volume of terra
>> preta production was good old maize. It just seemed an unlikely
>> option fortropical rainforests. That is when I started looking for
>> references to thepollen record. The article by DavidBennett and
>> Lehmann is one of those reverences that then emerged. Iwould like
>> to get a full
>> spectrum of the pollen profile since it seems verylikely that
>> while the fence rows held the food trees, it seems more likely
>> thatthey also used a variation of the three sisters using some
>> form of convenientlegume. Squashes also, of course, butnot nearly
>> as important. Thekey point of all this is that a family can
>> convert a field into terra preta inone short season, allowing them
>> to repeat the process thereafter as necessaryuntil the field is
>> completely transformed to depth. Today, we can do the same thing
>> using shovelsand a garbage can lid.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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