[Terrapreta] Critical thinking or lack thereof

[Frank Teuton]

While I have to agree that Crichton's 'complexity' stuff is 'analysis for 
the sake of paralysis' and largely worthless except that we need to keep an 
open mind,  I cannot agree with William Carr's following assertion:

   Wood and hay are carbon neutral fuels.   Coal, oil, and gas are not.
>
> Burning biomass has never added a gram of Carbon to the atmosphere
> that didn't COME from the atmosphere in the first place.

Wood and hay are not carbon neutral fuels unless the forest and haylands are 
managed sustainably on an equilibrium basis. Fossil fuel carbon ALSO came 
from the atmosphere, once upon a time. If we are degrading and emptying 
natural biomass reserves such as forests, grasslands and soil organic matter 
these must be understood as contributing to anthropogenic atmospheric 
CO2...indeed, our job is to try to figure out ways of refilling them as well 
as other methods for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing 
it, to allow us to control the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Fossil fuels are absolutely the leading problem now, but land use patterns 
are nonetheless major players both in terms of the causes of the current 
levels and as potential recipients of carbon to be sequestered. This 
includes TP of course, but is not at all limited to it.

In that sense, keeping 'complexity' in mind is never wrong. The devil is 
always hiding out in the details.

My two cents,

Frank Teuton

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Carr" <Jkirk3279 at qtm.net>
To: "Terra Preta" <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 2:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Critical thinking or lack thereof


>
>> "According to Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller Institute,
>> industrialized nations have been decarbonizing their energy sources
>> for 150 years, meaning we are moving away from carbon toward
>> hydrogen. In other words, the ratio of carbon to hydrogen decreases
>> as you go from wood and hay (1:1) to coal to oil to gas (1:4)"
>
> Did anybody catch this part?
>
> An invalid comparison if there ever was one.
>
> Crichton is cherry-picking his citations,  trying to prove we don't
> need to DO anything about carbon by going all the way back to HAY !
>
> As if there was some magic guiding force moving our society away from
> carbon, mysteriously operating in the background !
>
>
>
> It's an invalid comparison, if you're actually concerned about carbon
> dioxide as a Global Warming gas.
>
> Wood and hay are carbon neutral fuels.   Coal, oil, and gas are not.
>
> Burning biomass has never added a gram of Carbon to the atmosphere
> that didn't COME from the atmosphere in the first place.
>
>
>
>
> ************
>