Yesterday, I took a novel approach to converting short cycle organic carbon, a product of photosynthesis, into long cycle elemental carbon, biochar, with a one quart retort.  It gave a very clean result with the retort clean as a whistle at the end.  No tarry residues on the inside of the lid or any place else.  The retort was loaded with about 1 quart of wood pellets and yielded about 16 oz of char — by volume.

To read how this becomes “Everyman’s gas well in a can, a distributed solution”, please follow the link below:

Everyman’s gas well in a can, a distributed solution .pdf

The illustrations and text in the PDF will allow you to make your own gas well in a can easily, quickly, and safely. It’s a fun project that you will enjoy. I hope you will do this experiment and then post comments about your experiences for other readers to learn from.

If you use this in a science class, please let me know.

Note: For a good resource on biochar, I recommend the Biochar Farms site.  Be sure to scroll down their top page to see their excellent “Schematic of Biochar Solutions“.

Note 2: ZeroPoint Clean Tech is well on the way to commercializing the use of “Manufactured Gas” made from biomass — NOT coal.

Note 3: Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry on  the key role “Manufactured Gas” played in economic development in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Author: Jock Gill

Today, we need to reflect on the lack of meaningful change and the seemingly unchangeable ancien regime of 20th century America.

The Boston Globe ran a front page story on how Corporations invested $100 million per month for ten months, thats a B as in one billion dollars, to stymy change and preserve the legacy approaches of yesteryear. If they could not block Obama’s election, they could make sure no change you could hope for would be enacted.

DailyKos has run an item “No One Is Going To Save You Fools“.

Before I explain the generic insult, let me first make something perfectly clear: I am your enemy. That you don’t know this is understandable: after all, people like me prefer it that way. But until you understand just what you’re up against and why, you’re going to continue to lose, and look like fools in the process.

Barack Obama has indeed sold you out. He and many of his Democratic colleagues have sold you out on healthcare, and they’ve sold you out on financial reform. You were looking for a savior, and you’ve been had–not an altogether atypical result for those looking for a strong leader to “save” them.

He hasn’t done this because he’s a bad guy. In fact, he’s a great guy. I think he’s doing pretty much the best job he can. He’s sold you out because he’s not afraid of you. And really, if I may be so bold, he shouldn’t be afraid of you. You don’t know who really runs the show, and you’re far too fickle and manipulable to count on.

thereisnospoon’s diary :: ::
The first thing you need to understand about healthcare reform is what Jane Hamsher identified long ago: nothing–absolutely nothing–is going to trump the White House’s deal with PhRMA and the insurance industry. The question you need to ask yourselves is: why? If you’re intellectually mature enough to get past “personal betrayal” as your best answer, you’ll be on the right track.

While you ponder that one, you might want to also consider why nothing has been done–nor will anything serious actually be done–about financial industry reform. Standing up to the financial industry in the current political environment should be a no-brainer. So what in the heck is going on here? If you can think past shadowy conspiracy theories and possible personal enrichment for the Obama family, you’ll be doing the kind of thinking that will help actually solve the problem.

The problem is people like me, and the people I work for. I’m what they call a Qualitative Research Consultant, or QRC for short. Here’s my website. There’s even a whole association of us who meet regularly to discuss ideas and tactics. Together with the AAPC, the MRA, the AMA, ESOMAR, and a whole host of other organizations you’ve never heard of, we have more power and control than you know. We’re extremely good at what we do, and we do it all behind the scenes, appealing to and manipulating your subconscious brain in ways that your conscious brain has little to no control over.

Clearly, today, too many politicians are too beholden to corporate money. If we want real change, if we want to spend $1 billion dollars inventing the future and the next release of the Modern Era, we have to begin by getting corporate money out of politics. In a word, we must abolish the entrenched fiction that corporations are persons with constitutional rights. Only when we do this, and restore the prohibition of corporations engaging in political activity, will our elected representatives truly work once again for we the people.

Do you really think 100,000 contractors and 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan are about do for the Afghans what we will not, cannot, do for ourselves? And if we cannot, do not, what chance of success do we have there? Or Iraq? Or at home? Where is the change we can believe in? When will Obama stand up to the monied interests of Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex?

If what people see is mainly greed and rigid ideologies run amok and contaminating the highest levels of our government, what should they believe? We talk one talk, but we walk quite another walk. In a word, our propaganda and our actions are in conflict and provide no reliable reference point. Would you trust anyone who did this?

Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

What, then, is the soil, the essential foundation, of our economy and Western culture? Perhaps it is entrepreneurial start ups, small business and enterprises on Main Street. These have historically been the largest generators of jobs. If this economic soil, like the soils of our forests and fields, has been over-mined and voraciously exploited by the industrial model, then is it any wonder we have a jobless recovery? After all, the government’s economic soil amendments have, so far, gone to the largest and most predatory businesses in America, especially to the too-big-to-fail banks and car companies. What do we call banks that will not loan Main Street and small businesses our very own tax dollars? Our money that they are now handing out as bonuses to the already rich? Is this any way to restore the soils that support our very economic well being?

Properly inoculated biochar is, in many ways, all about restoring the carbon content as well as the health and vitality of the living soils of our forests and fields — as well as many other environmental benefits. What is the biochar analog we need to apply to the economic soils that nurture and support entrepreneurial start ups, small businesses, and Main Street? If we want to have a recovery that provides plentiful jobs, we had better find that analog and start applying it as soon as possible.

Update:

“Jane D’Arista is an economist with the Financial Markets Center in Philomont, VA. She is a Research Associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and author of the masterful study of U.S. financial regulation, The Evolution of U.S. Finance. For more than thirty years, Jane D’Arista has been one of the country’s most insightful analysts of financial markets and regulation.”

D’Arista was interviewed by The RealNews Network to create “Anatomy of casino capitalism”. The interview is presented in 8 parts. Please be sure to watch all 8 parts. If you do, you will have some pretty good ideas about what needs to be done to start rebuilding our economic soils and preserving some vestige of Economic Sovereignty.

Watch all 8 episodes here.

Read her Oct. 29th testimony before the US House’s Committee on Financial Services here.

After much expansion and refinement, the final copy (Version 2) of the “All Biochars…” paper has been released back to the NABC (NorthAmerica Biochars Conference, Boulder Colorado, August 2009) for inclusion in their proceedings.

As such, the final version of this document, provided in two formats. One is in MS Word ( .doc ) and allows readers to access the underlying spreadsheets – it emails at about 3.5 megs. The other version is All-Biochars–Version2–Oct2009.pdf- much smaller at about 1.5 megs.

The document has 36 pages including 17 figures and three main conclusions. The contents are a blend of technical topics and basic/common sense comments, including some “do-it-yourself” methods about making and analyzing biochars. It is a “contribution,” but is not intended to be all encompassing about biochar characteristics.

This document in either or both formats may be distributed to colleagues and (without alterations) may be placed onto Websites to facilitate distribution.

This was a group effort by co-authors McLaughlin, Anderson, Shields and Reed who welcome further discussion but who do not intend to alter this document. Instead, we encourage others to present additional documents that give further progress to specific issues of interest.

On behalf of the co-authors,

Paul
–Paul S Anderson, Ph.D. — aka Dr. TLUD (“Dr. Tee-lud”)
Biomass Energy Consultant with BEF, & Partner in Chip Energy.
Specialist in micro-gasification. Office & Res: 309-452-7072
www.chipenergy.com
www.bioenergylists.org/andersontludconstruction

It is critical to understand that, starting in 1980 with Pres. Reagan, our public health infrastructure has been eviscerated. After all, if the government can do no good and is by definition “the problem”, why pay for a public health infrastructure?

The real problem is that now we are facing a sharp peak, an exponential rate of growth, in the H1N1 pandemic. This peak will range from about October 15 – November 21. A consequence of Pres. Reagan’s political philosophy, and resultant under-funding of public health, is that, now that we need all of the benefits of a public health infrastructure to inform, guide and help us weather this storm, we have to ask if we actually have what we need. Do we know what is happening in enough detail in time to make the best decisions in a timely and effective manner?

H1N1 may yet again prove the fallacy of the the notion that only the private sector can solve our problems and the public sector can never be the answer. The spike in absenteeism caused by H1N1, for example, is apt to have a measurable impact on 4th quarter GDP. Will this have political consequences in the mid-term elections? Will the fruits of the Reagan era, and all of their unintended negative consequences, be blamed on the current Administration?

A key test is whether the government, despite the Reagan/Bush heritage, will have enough information to be able to offer sufficiently accurate information and appropriate timely responses to maintain public trust. This remains to be seen. There is already evidence of institutions in Washington sending employees home when a co-worker develops H1N1 but swearing the employees to secrecy. This intellectually dishonest ‘cover up’ denies the public health services the very data they must have to maintain the public’s trust. How long will this be tolerated?

So far we have seen the disastrous results of the Reagan/Bush philosophy of the government and its regulations as always being the problem, and never right, in the current economic and housing turmoil we are suffering through. We are seeing the same terrible consequences of the view that the private sector is the only and best answer when it comes to the bloated cost of our fragmented healthcare system that still leaves 10s of millions of American uninsured or under-insured. H1N1 may show us another tragic consequence of the blighted and simplistically one sided views of the market fundamentalist.

The question everyone should be asking is: What can the private sector in the US get right at all? Not Wall Street. Not automobiles. Not healthcare for all. Not secure home ownership you can believe in. Not a stable and secure environment that gets better from generation to generation. Not soils that have increasing carbon content and biological vitality. Not a diet that does not promote diabetes and other costly health problems. Not secure employment with a retirement plan to you can trust to be there when you need it. And the list goes on. Not even a job for everyone who wants one.

The answer is simply that neither the private sector nor the public sector is sufficient. Both are limited by imperfect knowledge and constrained by the seven deadly sins, human nature. It is clearly necessary for both the private and public sectors to work together to overcome these endless limitations as best they can.

America will not regain its vitality until the private and public sectors, working together, instead of against one another, form a synergy that is greater than the sum of the parts. This will require the re-establishment of the separation of State, Church, and the Private Sector. This would truly be Change We Can Believe In.

Myth X: The market functions well enough today because it’s pricing function is accurate.

My thesis is that the pricing function we have today is actually pathological and is based on playing with crooked dice and marked cards. We want the answer to be “cheap” — so we lie to ourselves, cheat, and rig our pricing function to get the answer we want.

When I ask people if they want a healthy atmosphere, healthy soils and clean water, they all say yes. If I ask what the value of these three conditions is, they have a very hard time ‘pricing’ them. Nor can they price the cost of NOT doing anything to keep our natural world clean and safe.

On the other hand, many people understand that the price of a soda pop, for example, should include all of its end-to-end costs with no externalities allowed. Include the cost of filling up the land fill, of causing obesity & diabetes, of bad nutrition, of the carbon foot print of trucking sugar water anywhere, perhaps even include the energy ‘wasted’ making a non essential ‘food’., etc. etc. etc.

Now, if we apply end-to-end pricing to fossil fuels, a much more accurate pricing function, then what happens, for example, to the price,of coal when its price includes ALL of the environmental damage it does [air, water, soils, landscape], the health hazards it creates, etc? If we do the same with fossil fuels from insecure and vulnerable off shore sources, then we must also include the military costs of defending them. What then becomes the honest price of Oil? Natural gas? Atomic power?

In general, we profess that we do not want to dictate people’s choices. We want to be free to inflict damages on our neighbors. But should we expect to pay for the damages of our choices up front? Most states require people to take reasonable steps to reduce the burden of emergency healthcare: seat belts and bike safety helmets come to mind. What about the damages people’s energy choices can inflict? Should we impose at least a $1.00 per gallon carbon tax on fossil transportation fuels? Or would it be more honest and market oriented to require end-to-end energy pricing, with no externalities?

Now, if we had an honest and all inclusive end-to-end pricing function, could we then eliminate ALL subsidies for all energy? Which would be more honest: Removing all subsidies and tax loopholes from fossil transportation fuels or layering on a $1.00 tax? Which choice would actually do the most to improve the health of the atmosphere, the soils and our water, while also improving the health of the market economy?

How would these two policy choices change the playing field? Can we model this?

On a related topic, David Yarrow led a small team of dedicated biochar supporters and had a great day at Shelburne Farms yesterday. One thing that became very clear is that it much more powerful to give people a positive story to be for, than it is to give them a negative story to be against.

For example, I would share my vision of hundreds of homes in a local community heating with carbon negative pyrolysis systems and selling or trading their resultant biochar back to their local Community Supported Agriculture farms. This creates a virtuous cycle where their CSAs could, completing the loop, start providing them with Nutrient-Dense Carbon-Negative foods. As people heated their homes, instead of feeling guilty, they would be looking forward to more nutritious and healthier foods in the coming summer and forever afterwards for generations to come. Further, as the biochar in the fields builds up, carbon negative pyrolysis heating will also help keep the waters clean by mitigating run off contamination.

The people I shared this vision with understood and were amazed at the possibility of even thinking that we could tie our heating systems and our food systems together in a new configuration that would help improve the health of the atmosphere, our soils and our water. They were excited to BE FOR this idea that warmth, food and cleaner water could be integrated into something greater than the sum of its parts. Liberating people from silo thinking, feeling guilty, and hopeless can be very energizing.

It is simply not good enough, not effective, to only offer guilty choices of bad or less bad, high carbon vs low carbon solutions. Our challenge is to invent solutions that can be embraced, will be embraced, because they are positively good for you and your future generations. We need solutions people want to embrace and feel good about embracing. Solutions that offer an enhanced view of the future, not a diminished one. We will do best to go beyond solutions that only offer people the option of feeling less guilty. This is the most likely way to create a positive feed-back loop that may be able to take these new approaches ‘viral’.

Of course, another alternative is for things to go way wrong and create situations where the governments are reduced to imposing rationing and other controls in response to chaos induced by climate disruption.

Additional Biochar resources:

1. Biomass Magazine

2. The Economist

3. Biochar Conference at UMass Amherst, Nov. 13, 2009

4. Introduction to Biochar: Six Posters from IBI

We know that turning milk into cheese adds a great deal of value at the farm gate. I expect turning locally produced biomass into heat and biochar, and finally supporting the growing of Nutrient Dense and Carbon Negatives foods will, as suggested by David Yarrow, also add a great deal of value. Further, this approach will keep both food and energy dollars circulating in the local economy longer. This is known to be an economic stimulus, rather than hemorrhaging the money out of the community as is the case when buying energy and food “from away”.

The synergy between the CSE and the CSA should create a result greater than the sum of the parts. Not only will it help with carbon negative heating and nutrient dense and carbon negative foods, but every ton of biochar sequestered in the soils of the CSA will also increase crop yields in a virtuous cycle. This coupling of biomass to food and energy production, integrated with the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere for many hundreds of years, is truly a triple play at the intersection of Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment.

Note: In my view. the operating radius of the CSE needs to be as small as possible in order to minimize the carbon foot print of the transportation of the biomass, fuel, and biochar.

In 2009, we are looking at climate disruption most likely driven at least in part by overshooting the capacity of the planet’s sinks for wastes such as carbon dioxide. I expect that these will be just a few of the changes we will face in Vermont from not learning about limits back in 1840.

1. Significant population growth in northern Vermont as people move away from deteriorating conditions to the south. Perhaps as much as 10X by the end of the century;

2. As one forest type dies out to be replaced by another, succession driven by new pests, viruses, fungi, shorter & warmer winters, etc., we will have a great many dead trees to deal with. We have only to look to Colorado’s acre upon acre of dead trees to see what can happen.

3. Just as deer ticks have moved north as the weather has moderated, and as my poison ivy patch is more vigorous than ever, I next expect to see poisonous snakes to also expand north into newly favorable territory.

So what sorts of things might we thing about doing to try to mitigate what we mostly likely can no longer avoid?

First the positive:

Ben Luce at Lyndon State College suggests that if we grow photovoltaics, PV, and wind generating capacity by 20% per year for the next 25 years, we should end up with more power then than we have today, but with a great deal less CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Prof. Luce also sees that some biomass will be required to back up both the PV and the Wind.

Now we have to also work reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to get it back below 350 parts per million. Possible ideas:

1. A significant fee on any new construction that uses fossil energy for home heating and other space conditioning applications;

2. A significant reward for space conditioning solutions that are provably Carbon Negative.

3. Create incentives to build near zero net energy houses. These typically have at least 12 inches of insulation in their walls, triple glazed windows, etc. Germany is a leading developer of such housing. Such houses can be heated with approximately 1 ton of biomass, where as our current housing stock will require 7 – 10 tons of biofuel per year. We can not afford to spend multiple tons when 1 ton would do.

4. A ban on using biofuels in any device that does not extract at least 75% of the value of the biomass. We simply can not afford to put finite and valuable biomass into devices that first off throw away 2/3s of the value of the fuel as ‘waste’ heat. IE: No more biomass for internal combustion engines. No more biomass for centralized power plants. Both of these technologies are negative legacies of the 20th century.

Biomass fired Combined Heat and Power technology should be able to reach 90%, or better, efficiencies. We can afford nothing less. Further, we should require this technology to be carbon negative as well. Personally, I have been a big fan of Micro-CHP at every point of demand, scaled to the demand.

5. A shift towards a long carbon cycle with carbon sequestration in the soils of the forests and the fields. Perhaps a minimum of a 100 year half life for the carbon. I prefer 500 years.

6. Promote David Yarrow’s concept of a premium for Nutrient Dense, Carbon Negative, Foods and extend it to a generalized carbon negative philosophy of living?

How carbon negative are you?

7. Ban the construction of new atomic and coal fired power plants. If we did a complete end-to-end, full life cycle cost analysis of nuclear and coal power, including de-commissioning, 10s of thousands of years of spent fuel storage, health costs imposed by low level radiation emissions and heavy metals injected into atmosphere etc, then the pricing signal we would get for these power sources would likely we so high we could not afford either of them.

I am sure there are many more ideas that are even better.

如果大气中最大限额CO2含量是350单位/百万，可如今已经是385，那么仅仅减少CO2排放率是否合理？简单说，是否所有针对减排的策略都如同将泰坦尼克号甲板上的椅子重排？

或者按照逻辑来说，我们是否必须尽快从大气中去除CO2？我们能否尽快将大气中CO2减少10%来避免全球气候紊乱？

在2007年，大气中CO2已含385单位。可是我们并没有听到任何关于“转移重心”的谈话，也没有任何在全球范围内为了保持生态平衡而去除CO2的行动。历史证明了过度逾越限制无疑带来悲剧的结果：死亡和生态系统坍塌。这难道是我们想要的将来？

如果不是，我们已经学会如何完全准确地给CO2“标价”。如今，我们趋于用扭曲的方式标价CO2来得到我们想要的：廉价能源。最终，如果我们 “烧了书”，结果肯定会“烧死我们”。

那么生物碳是不是一种能够“转移重心”，让土壤更多产肥沃从而让我们获利的方法？这种带来能利润且又可去除CO2的方法是最有可能成功的。我们又如何在设定时间内，全球范围地达到我们预期的结果？

生物碳，是由有机垃圾，如动物粪便，动物骨头，植物根茎，木屑和麦秸秆等加工而成的一种多孔碳。这些构成生物碳的有机垃圾被称为“生物量”。很多科学家冠以生物碳“黑色黄金”的美誉。

由植物形成的，以固定碳元素为目的的木炭被称为“生物碳”。土地中自然存在大量的碳元素，但是这些碳是不稳定的，受气候影响会释放二氧化碳。 而生物碳则可以固定碳元素长达几百年。更重要的是，其生产过程中产生的副产品，对人们具有很大的吸引力。生产中，大约1/3原料变为生物碳，1/3变为可 用于发电的物质，另1/3则形成原油。因此科学家表示：“生物碳使我们能够一次性解决三个重大危机：气候变化危机，能源危机，以及食品和水资源危机。”

地球本身拥有一个碳循环系统，碳可以被植物，土地，海洋和其他自然过程沉积下来。然而这些系统目前已经严重超负荷了。据统计，2000到2007，全球环境体系共沉积了48亿吨人类排放的碳，然而仍然有40亿吨的剩余。而生物碳每年可以沉积10到20亿吨碳元素。它的这种神秘的、独一无二的特性，使其成为研究气候变化最热门的领域。

Chinese translation, adaptation, and new material by Pan Yi, Shanghai, China.

The full English language original is posted here.

Posted by: 吉桥 / Jock Gill, Peacham, VT, America