[Terrapreta] Ice-age anyone / water content of TP source material

[Corprew / Zeitgeist]

Greg and April wrote:
> In not going to get involved in this discussion other than to say that 
> there is a marine research institute over on the east coast and allot of 
> the scientist there tend to believe that a solid warming trend will 
> trigger a global cooling event due to the ice melting and the stopping 
> the gulf stream from bringing warn water from the equator to the 
> northern latitudes - their argument is fairly convincing.

Relevant details about this can be found at: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation and 
they say cooling of N. Europe, not an overall cooling for the planet.

Note that this is largely irrelevant to the question of Terra Preta, but 
I do have an actual TP-related question:

I'm in the Seattle area (North-Western Corner of US) currently, and I 
was wondering what effect moisture in the source material (mostly 
blackberry bushes and bamboo in this case -- those are crazy weeds in 
this part of the planet) has on the use of terra preta, or if someone 
has a technique they'd recommend for somewhat dampish materials.[1]

I've previously used a retort made from a steel barrel in a somewhat 
haphard that turned out similar to Folke Gunther's on the list a couple 
of days ago[2], but I was wondering if people had any useful technique 
advice.  I'm doing this as an experiment in using the spring harvest of 
weeds as TP source material, so it's very important that none of the 
source be capable of sprouting by the time the process ends.

Thanks,

--Corprew
[1] the current energy requirement to dry out a bunch of wood locally 
borders on the hilarious.
[2] http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/gunthersimple0408