The whole "green" factor

[BrianG]

Psychotic? Previous geological periods when there was much more atmospheric CO2 were mentally ill? Were SUV's, coal power plants and ski jets all the rage a million years ago?

 

Green jobs are just wonderful, whatever floats your boat.

 

"Coral reefs under threat, weather patterns changing, increased droughts, increasingly intense bushfires (here in Australia), increasing floods, spreading famines across Africa, rising seawaters, War, Famine, Disease and Death... the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

 

Peace, food security, sanitation and development might save more lives than reducing CO2 emissions.

[Michaelangelica]

Psychotic? Previous geological periods when there was much more atmospheric CO2 were mentally ill? Were SUV's, coal power plants and ski jets all the rage a million years ago?

 

Green jobs are just wonderful, whatever floats your boat.

 

"Coral reefs under threat, weather patterns changing, increased droughts, increasingly intense bushfires (here in Australia), increasing floods, spreading famines across Africa, rising seawaters, War, Famine, Disease and Death... the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

 

Peace, food security, sanitation and development might save more lives than reducing CO2 emissions.

 

This is nonsense.

What drug are you taking?

[modest]

This is psychotic.

What drug are you taking?

 

Play the ball, not the player.

 

~modest

[Eclipse Now]

Thanks Modest... I'll try to calm down. Got another post I'll run over and edit...

[Michaelangelica]

Play the ball, not the player.

 

~modest

There is no ball.

[BrianG]

Yes, you have. An increase in global temperature may increase the variability of weather patterns and said extremes. Likewise it may shift weather patterns causeing more sever and frequent droughts, rapid changes in species (opening some areas to expansion of species while closing others). Examples of this include some pine beetles which are wiping out pines in some areas in Colorado and Canada.

 

How much of this change is man made, how much is natural?

 

The problem with your experiment is that you can't correct it IF you do find that the results are negative.

 

You're right, it's much more difficult to take carbon out of the air, than to add it in.

 

Carbon stays in the atmosphere for many decades.

If you have a way to remove carbon, great, we are all for it and I would love to hear about it.

House plants, that works on a small scale, and it makes our homes more comfortable.

 

Unfortunately, no method that is not prohibitively expensive or works on a large enough scale has been found yet.

 

Again, you're right. house plants, sequestering carbon in books, art or furniture are small scale techniques.

[Eclipse Now]

Hi guys,

we might not be able to sequester all of the carbon, but one 'wedge' is pretty good.

 

2. What is IBI’s goal for carbon removal from the atmosphere?

IBI is focusing presently on the feasibility of one “wedge,” which equals one gigaton of carbon per year. The term “wedge” comes from an often-quoted analysis (Pacala and Socolow, 2004) showing a need to have seven gigatons of carbon per year (seven wedges) of reduced carbon emissions by 2054 to keep emissions at the 2004

level.

 

3. Is a one gigaton per year biochar wedge achievable by 2054?

 

Yes. In the four basic scenarios we have examined, we found several ways to create at least one wedge by 2054.

 

http://www.biochar-international.org/images/final_carbon.pdf

 

I love biochar for so many reasons. Biochar seems one of our best bets for post-oil agriculture, and could both rejuvenate the soil and provide some liquid / gaseous fuels to run the world's harvesters and rural fuel needs in a post-oil world. (As long as the rest of us city folk get by on largely electric transport such as Electric Vehicles, Trains, Trams, and Trolley buses... and more pushbikes!;))

 

But there are already a number of Terra Preta / Biochar threads on this site.

 

Needless to say, Biochar could take today's agriwaste and turn it into tomorrow's improved soils and rural liquid fuel security. (But don't let anyone tell you biochar fuels could replace all our oil needs, as that's a walk on the fantastical side).

[BrianG]

It sure would be nice if we could pull [ce]CO_2[/ce] out of the air faster. Plants do such a neat job of it, but they are slow and need light. [ce]CO_2[/ce]'s freezing point of -78.5C is so low, we'll not be able to just shovel it off the driveway, and stick it away in the basement for cold storage.

[Eclipse Now]

Biochar can do about 1/9th of the job... if we scale up biocharing all agriwaste and forestry waste worldwide. (This is without chopping down an additional tree in any rainforest... I'm totally against logging any OLD GROWTH forest of any kind, ever. Woody tree weeds in Australia, maybe. Plantation wood? Definitely. But it is a crime to cut down old growth forest when biodiversity is under threat, ecosystems are under threat, global warming is a threat, and hemp can grow paper and fibre for Medium Density Particle board as fast as we need it, in marginal lands at that!)

[BrianG]

Biochar can do about 1/9th of the job... if we scale up biocharing all agriwaste and forestry waste worldwide...

 

I live in a rural area and it looks like farmers use agriwaste in compost now.

[Eclipse Now]

Yep, but within 6 months the straw-stubble has rotted and lost the impact on the soil and the Co2 has returned into the atmosphere. This way you're taking the same stuff and turning it into charcoal which:

* sequesters Co2 improving future farm yields by helping stabilise the climate

* provides a "coral sea" of the soil in which microbes can far more easily live

* retains water better

* eventually becomes a home for micro-fungi that grow and die and grow and die and the organic remains of this fungal matter are nitrogen rich, reducing the farmer's nitrogen needs by a whopping 30% which is an ENORMOUS financial saving.

 

But if you doubt me, try asking a question on this thread where some of the real biochar enthusiasts live.

 

On the general vibe of the "whole green factor"... I start to draw the line when companies try to produce Co2 neutral beer, or the CSIRO spends a bit too much money on producing cows that don't burp. Now don't get me wrong, I guess we should be looking at all these other things... but if we're spending a few million on the cow-burps as opposed to a demonstrable 24/7 CETO wave power baseload power station that can ALSO provide desalinated water during off-peak electricity hours overnight, then I'm wondering if we're wasting our money.

 

To solve global warming I think 2 things are paramount.

1. A worldwide ban on ANY new coal fired power station, EVER AGAIN. This would eliminate the complicated super-tax of an Emissions Trading Scheme, which I'm not so sure is actually going to do anything and has got to be the most awful thing to administer and 'count'.

 

2. Ban old growth forest logging. It's time to draw a line in the sand and not log ANY more rainforest or old growth forest. Trees grow again. Let's plant more, and only use plantation wood, and let's get smart and plant hemp and only use hemp-paper as it is a much faster crop.

 

If we banned any new coal plants, and gradually shut them down as the coal fired power plants aged, then peak oil and gas arriving in the next few years would probably help reduce the Co2.

 

Ban coal and any non-plantation logging. There's HEAPS more we could do if we wanted, such as Rezoning our cities around New Urbanism, Replenishing the soil with Agrichar, Re-railing the continents with High Speed Rail, etc.

 

But just banning a single new coal fired power plant and letting peak oil & gas do the rest, wouldn't that fix it?

 

Then we wouldn't even have to worry about burping cows! :)