[Terrapreta] Char charged vermicomposting trial---They like it!

[Frank Teuton]

Hi Sean,

My complaint is focused on your not seeing the contingent character of biomass production. Imagine an acre of corn...in Iowa, in Ontario, in Africa.....think of different management schemes, organic, conventional, no-till....imagine what that acre was in its full climax ecosystem state before being converted by man.

That last image represents the full tank of the carbon reservoir. All agro-ecosystem versions represent a tiny fraction of the full tank. In many scenarios corn production results in a net loss of SOM; if you take corn stover out of the process for biochar production you accelerate this process.

http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/6/1665

OTOH, if that acre were in climax forest right at equilibrium for CO2 production and consumption, you could selectively harvest woody matter for charring out of that acre while keeping the reservoir full and even overfilling it using biochar as a soil amendment (probably want to apply it before leaf drop every autumn for best worm attraction.) In that scenario rather than further degrading a piece of already degraded land, you could achieve a 'Full Tank Plus' status.

I hope we can agree that making biochar from organic matter on soils already starved for organic matter is robbing Peter to pay Paul in a descending spiral; it is only when you can make biochar in an ascending spiral that you will actually be doing something positive.

IOW, there is nothing automatic about the statment that making biochar from biomass CANNOT increase atmospheric CO2...under many scenarios it certainly can, by further emptying carbon from the soil organic matter and biomass reservoirs in particular situations. The assumption that these will willy nilly refill themselves is simply mistaken, both historically and in many cases under modern conditions as well.

Frank Teuton
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: Dan Culbertson ; Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org ; Frank Teuton 
  Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 1:56 AM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Char charged vermicomposting trial---They like it!


  Hi Frank,

  You quoted me to make some point counter to an argument that I do not think I was making.  Nor am I even arguing against what you say here.

  The list also has a seemingly incorrigible blind spot vis a vis biological reservoirs of carbon and the current excess atmospheric CO2 levels. Hear Sean K. Barry repeating the faulty mantra:

  "Biomass can produce gases from combustion which are classified as GHGs.  However (and this is a critically important distinction), burning biomass CANNOT increase GHG concentrations in the atmosphere!  The cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin, sugars, and starch, that are in biomass are made via photosynthesis when the plants are growing and taking CO2 and H2O from the Biosphere.  Releasing those gases back into the atmosphere, there is no net gain."

  This just FAILS to understand that biological reservoirs of carbon are in many cases being depleted and never restored; deforestation, soil organic matter depletion through tillage, even overfishing oceans....human behaviors involving biomass reductions which are never recovered from. The tallgrass prairies on the Great Plains are now soil eroded wheat fields; the stored carbon that was there is now mostly aloft (in an equilibrium sense). The huge forests that once occupied the eastern United States and Canada are now mere striplings compared to their former grandeur. Look at old manifests of clear lumber for the now unheard of sizes of hardwoods and softwoods....these giants are long gone.

  Carbon in living biomass (or just harvested/cut down, fresh stover, or about to be composted biomass) all came from CO2 in the atmosphere.  I do not think that you or anyone else on the list would dispute this.  Fossil carbon comes from deep under the rhizosphere in the ground and did not come from the atmosphere.  No dispute here either, right?

  Burning one (freshly grown, renewable, and naturally renewing, biomass carbon) does not increase the net amount of carbon in the atmosphere and burning the other (fossil carbon) does.  We cannot reduce biological carbon stores and make it all into charcoal.  We have to selectively reduce to charcoal only that biomass which would otherwise decay and release the CO2.  We cannot cut down forests to make charcoal.  That is the only point I was making.  You are right that humans have degraded the land and the soils and the seas.  We have harvested huge amounts of biomass resources and blown much of it up into the atmosphere.  More than nature did before we got a hold of the biomass.  We did not do the carbon recovery back into the land that Nature does either.

  Nonetheless, making charcoal out of some biomass carbon and burning some back into the air is a far better choice to make than continuing to burn fossil carbon fuels and increase the atmospheric CO2 concentrations (as only burning fossil fuels can).

  Faulty mantra?

  Regards,

  SKB

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