[Terrapreta] Growing Trees

[Peter Read]

Thanks Dave for this thoughtful response and to other copy addressees for brief and positive remarks.

It really is quite stunning how ignorant (or as my mother would say "there's none so blind as won't see) some distinguished scientists can be.  There's Gaia protagonist James Lovelock in Nature (449, 403, 2007, "Ocean pipes could help the Earth to cure itself"  co-authored with London Science Museum Director Chris Rapley) writing that "The removal of 500 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the air by human endeavour is beyond our current technological capability".  In fact no rocket science is involved, just getting on with the job.  If we draw down 1 trillion tons of C into the land (x44/12 for CO2) as we most likely need to if the tipping point is to be avoided, over 40 per cent comes from the ocean as atmospheric concentrations fall, correcting ocean acidification at the same time .

But yes, if that prospect is to be achieved, the forestry and other land use improvements must be associated with on-going scientific research and related extension and capacity building work to ensure its application in the field, and on-going monitoring systems involving local communities and (because local communities are not always good as gold) NGO's to ensure best practice sustainability conditions are applied to the award of any carbon credits got from the application of biochar and other carbon conserving schemes.

It would be nice to think that our negotiators, struggling towards a post-2012 climate regime, are actually thinking about these things.

Peter
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dave Demyan 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 2:35 PM
  Subject: [Terrapreta] Growing Trees


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