Category Archive for 'Energy'
Friday 12 Feb 2010
On the path to a Carbon Negative Future –
Marissa, a newly minted 2canologist at Shelburne Farms, has just lit about 4 pounds of softwood pellets in the TLUD [Top Lit Up Draft] stove she has just built. In about 75 minutes, this will turn into about 1 pound of biochar suitable for experimenting with.
For [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Empowerment, Energy, Technology, Vermont
Thursday 19 Nov 2009
People who delve into the world of biochar pretty soon find themselves learning a whole lot about soil. Soil, contrary to the Industrial view of the world, is not, it turns out, a simple dirt substrate we act on. To get a glimpse of the biological view of soil as a dynamic living organism [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Economy, Energy, Politics, Technology
Monday 16 Nov 2009
Grown in Cape Cod’s Sandy Soil, Amended with Biochar
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Energy, Technology
Sunday 15 Nov 2009
On November 14th, I was able to run a batch of year old grass tablets
made in a BHS Energy Slugger through a TLUD stove designed by Paul S.
Anderson [Dr. TLUD] and assembled in India.
This shows that we can extend the range of options for the carbon in
grass biomass to include carbon negative solutions such as [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy, Technology
Thursday 22 Oct 2009
Trees and grasses are approximately 50% carbon.
The critical question at hand is simply this: Can the carbon captured by photosynthesis and converted by pyrolysis to stable agricultural charcoal, Biochar, properly inoculated with minerals, microbes, fungi, etc, be used today to:
1. improve soil quality & crop yields? Are our soils at an optimum carbon content level [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy, Politics, Technology
Saturday 03 Oct 2009
Dear Friends,
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 [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Technology
Sunday 20 Sep 2009
Perhaps we need to confront an old myth:
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 [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Community, Economy, Energy, Politics
Friday 11 Sep 2009
1. What Is Biochar
2. Biochar Can Be Carbon-Negative
3. Environmental Benefits of Biochar
4. Leading Climate Scientists Talk About the Biochar Solution
5. Biochar Production
6. International Biochar Initiative [IBI]
These PDFs print very well in either color or B&W and make excellent 8.5 x 11 hand-out “posters”.
Note: I would like to thank Lopa Brunjes for sending me [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy, Technology
Friday 04 Sep 2009
Biomass solutions should be clean, affordable, feasible, practical and simultaneously provide as many of these benefits as possible:
1. improve soil health & create compounding increases in annual food production by sequestering in the soil carbon extracted from the atmosphere by photosynthesis then captured in stable form by pyrolysis.
2. improve the conditions and viability of [...]
permalink | Jock Gill | Agriculture, Climate Change, Community, Energy
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