What is this picture all about?  Read the whole Char-B-Que story and find out.

Author:  Jock Gill

…we are still left with a disaster of a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and that the country as a whole will not support.

Winning in Afghanistan & Pakistan will require that Saudia Arabia stop using our oil dollars to fund the Taliban, their Wahhbi missionaries.  It will also require that Pakistan have blackout-free electricity and adequate supplies of clean water.  The winner will have to deliver shoes, clothes, food and education to the youth of Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the Taliban now do. Further, population growth has to be accounted for in planning and the governments of the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan must be willing and able to pay more than the Taliban.  Currently, the Taliban use their Saudi funding to be the highest wage payers.  Paying dearly to fight and enemy that we are at the same time superbly funding with our mindless energy policies is the height of folly and puts us squarely on the road to disaster.  To make matters worse, our tax policies are not aligned with our military and political objectives.  In fact, our tax policies demonstrate that we are hooked on the magical thinking that we can have it all:  ”guns and butter” with victory on the cheap.  Our opponents know full well that this confirms our lack of commitment and staying power.  Much the same could be said about our drug policies and their internal contradictions.  Why is none of this being broadly discussed here in the US?  Charlie Wilson and the CIA created the Taliban but then we abandoned our friends with the bitter fruit being a Taliban that has morphed into an out of control  monster.  Lastly, we must confront and reduce the level of deeply entrenched and systemic corruption that bedevils all parties in this conflict. Until we honestly face the ground truths listed above, and eliminate the flow of our energy dollars to Saudia Arabia, we will be locked in an unsustainable and un-winnable conflict, largely of our own making.

Author: Jock Gill

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

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 more on 2canology at Shelburne Farms, please see this item in inFARMation.

For illustrated documentation and directions for becoming a certified 2canologist yourself — it is easy, fun and very entertaining — you will find Dr. Hugh McLaughlin’s instructions here. 2canology is Dr. McLaughlin’s ingenious and creative gift to the world of biochar.

Biochar is now entering the mainstream media — as evidenced by this front page story in USA Today.

Photos courtesy of Marshall Webb of Shelburne Farms.

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.

Grown in Cape Cod’s Sandy Soil, Amended with Biochar

This shows that we can extend the range of options for the carbon in
grass biomass to include carbon negative solutions such as those based on biochar.

Al Gore recognizes the advantages of carbon sequestration via biochar in his new book “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis”

Please click here for more on TLUD stoves.

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 for best yields?  Could healthier soils feed more people? It worked in the Amazon for the Amerindians.

Soil fertility is complex.  It is important to understand why carbon is essential to soil fertility. Humic substances do the same thing as biochar/Terra preta – facilitate cation exchange capacity. Biochar and humic substances have a common parent material, lignin, and form the same type of functional groups on their surfaces. If you look at a textbook rendition of their molecular structures, lignin, humic acid and char, they are similar. It’s just that biochar is much more stable, especially in tropical or semi-arid environments. Very little humus forms in tropical soils. The parent material simply rots too quickly.

2. Act to remediate water quality, esp. caused by runoffs of E. coli and Phosphorus? Phosphorus needs to be re-captured as the supply is tight and costs will be going up.  Allowing it to run off  and ‘escape’ from the fields is bad economically and environmentally.

3. Sequester carbon for 1,000s of years thus contributing to “Low Carbon Agriculture” and perhaps even carbon negative foods?  

 4. Make better use of millions of tons of agricultural residues currently simply burned in the fields?  We know this also adds carbon soot to the atmosphere which is bad for health and is a significant climate change driver.  Agricultural residues could be used in a domestic pyrolysis unit for carbon negative cooking, heating and biochar production.  The biochar could be mixed with compost, animal manures, and urines – excellent sources of minerals. This enriched mixed would then be re-cycled back to the fields.

5. Reduce the amount of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers required?

6. Be used as a forest management tool to improve forest soils etc.?

7. With Biochar’s ability to retain water, is it a useful tool for fighting desertification? Drought and general lack of rain fall is expected to be a growing problem in many areas as a consequence of climate disruption.

I refer interested parties to this paper as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

See pages 4 & 5 esp. on Biochar.

The paper is described here:

Additionally, the International Biochar Initiative [IBI] has addressed most of the issues raised about biochar in the research summaries and FAQs that are on their web site.

The Research Summaries are here and the FAQs are here. 

It should be noted that the United Nations has just issued a report that over a billion people aren’t getting enough to eat.  We can, in all likelihood, reproduce the same proven, historical, benefits of agricultural charcoal by feeding soil biota with biochar and nutrients so that growing enough food to feed large populations becomes much easier. Then, of course, we get the added bonuses, including sequestering GHGs.

In conclusion, Biochar can be very useful today, even if it is not exactly the same as Terra preta. In fact, this is not at all about recreating Terra preta.  It is truly about learning how to use stabilized carbon today to improve soils, water, forests, the atmosphere, and make use of the renewable thermal energy produced by pyrolysis.  In short, plants capture carbon via photosynthesis.  The immediate question facing us now is how can we best use that carbon, stabilized by pyrolysis, to meet as many of our current goals as possible?

The single most important take away is that biochar is expected to be very useful IMMEDIATELY in the seven [7] areas I mentioned above.

Note: I owe thanks to Paul D. McCullough , Nando M. Breiter of the The CarbonZero Project, and Kelpie Wilson of the IBI, for materials and suggestions that made this a better post.

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

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