I hope that climate change robust and food producing trees, that support local
ecologies (human and wild) will dominate afforestation? Please. I set up a
little project planting food trees in schools in my home town, the schools love
it and it contributes positively on so many fronts, with no perceived
negatives. It is possible to do this well. Hemp on mass might be another
option, but may get branded as wooly. Thanks, emily.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on O2
-----Original Message-----
From: "Ronal W. Larson" <rongretlar...@comcast.net>
Sender: geoengineering@googlegroups.com
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:21:14
To: Greg Rau<gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Reply-To: rongretlar...@comcast.net
Cc: r...@llnl.gov<r...@llnl.gov>;
andrew.lock...@gmail.com<andrew.lock...@gmail.com>;
geoengineering<geoengineering@googlegroups.com>;
n...@etcgroup.org<n...@etcgroup.org>; j...@etcgroup.org<j...@etcgroup.org>;
sil...@etcgroup.org<sil...@etcgroup.org>; k...@etcgroup.org<k...@etcgroup.org>
Subject: Re: [geo] Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC?
Greg etal
This in response to your "fill me in otherwise" below:
I still think that Afforestation is being so thoroughly practiced now
globally that "deploying at a significant scale" should need little global
pre-arrangement. An RFP following an announcement with conditions and
available funding per tree or hectare would likely overwhelm the sponsor. I
heard a few months ago that every Chinese school child is expected to plant 5
trees per year (I don't know how any of your (quite legitimate) questions are
being answered there). Probably almost every country has a staff of foresters
ready to go. And I think we should start last week.
Re biochar, there are plenty of private transactions already occurring -
almost a few with a sequestration payment. Some are sure to be failures: wrong
char, soil, species, extras (compost, fertilizer, liming, etc) - but I put the
fault for that on the purchasers - it is very easy to do simple prior testing.
The main complaint from the few groups dissing biochar is that there is
insufficient long-term field data, so what you are asking for can be speeded
up. I am aware of no major issue in your list below that can be handled other
than by proceeding as we are - through ever larger field testing. Some
sequestration funding will help (a lot) to move faster. I'd appreciate hearing
from your or anyone why accelerated testing is not the right course. Just as
Afforestation has plenty of government foresters, biochar has soil scientists
and extension agents.
I would not recommend any government picking a winner, so there should be
funding for the research you are after for all/most CDR candidates. But I
think it also appropriate to have the equivalent of FITs (Feed In Tariffs) that
did a lot for PV. The per tonne C price can be lowered regularly to match the
money available. Proof of lifetime will be a key hurdle for biochar - maybe
for all the CDRs.
But waiting years for all questions to be answered does not seem
appropriate.
Ron
On Sep 28, 2013, at 4:35 PM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> While I agree that biochar, afforestation, BECCS, CROPS, etc are all valid
> CDR concepts, I would hesitate to advocate deploying these at a significant
> scale until impacts on land use, food production, soil chemistry, nutrient
> cycling, albedo, downstream/ocean impacts, societal implications, etc are
> better understood. All of this needs to be researched before we can call this
> available, safe and effective global CO2 management engineering/technology.
> Ditto for all other CDR concepts, or fill me in otherwise.
>
> I think at this stage, getting ahead of ourselves on this would be
> detrimental to the entire field if not the earth, Russ George and possibly
> REDD* being examples. So yes we need CDR, no we don't know what the winning
> methods will be, nor should we assume at this stage that there will be any of
> adequate size, safety, timeliness, and cost/effectiveness. Unfortunately,
> hype (positive and negative) has been/will be used to influence R&D $$
> allocation here, but let's hope that objectivity and level-headedness prevail
> in this allocation.
>
> *http://globaljusticeecology.org/publications.php?ID=472
>
> Greg
>
> From: Ronal W. Larson <rongretlar...@comcast.net>
> To: r...@llnl.gov
> Cc: "andrew.lock...@gmail.com" <andrew.lock...@gmail.com>; geoengineering
> <geoengineering@googlegroups.com>; "n...@etcgroup.org" <n...@etcgroup.org>;
> "j...@etcgroup.org" <j...@etcgroup.org>; "sil...@etcgroup.org"
> <sil...@etcgroup.org>; "k...@etcgroup.org" <k...@etcgroup.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [geo] Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC?
>
> Greg etal:
>
> I mostly agree. But not with your first paragraph below. Included in
> most definitions of CDR is "Afforestation" - and there are numerous groups
> ready to go on that introduction. And with relatively low cost - lower in
> developing countries. This seems well past the stage you feel is still
> before us.
>
> Biochar is nowhere near in the same position, but one company has
> announced funding approaching $200 million, with selected sites that could
> have operational units very soon (see:
> http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2013/08/25/cool-planet-to-invest-168m-in-louisiana-stealthy-biotechnology-heads-for-scale/
> ). They are primarily a biofuels company, but CDR is a major part of the
> business plan. I believe they know how to find money for sequestration to
> lower costs substantially to those receiving the CDR product. Their
> engineering phase is largely past. I know of a dozen other biochar firms
> operating now at a smaller scale that are also past at least the initial
> engineering phase.
>
> I have seen (un-named type) CDR costs in print that are likely 10 times
> what biochar costs are likely to become. I don't have publishable values,
> since private firms would rather keep their costs to themselves -
> understandably), I have just today learned more about the recently increased
> Federal value for SCC - the societal cost for carbon. It (a central value)
> seems to be about $41/tonne CO2. That number is plenty to drive both
> afforestation and biochar markets - hopefully other CDR markets. In another
> note soon, I will justify this $41 number.
>
> Ron
>
>
> On Sep 28, 2013, at 11:14 AM, "Rau, Greg" <r...@llnl.gov> wrote:
>
>> To answer the title's question why GE - I can't speak for the IPCC authors,
>> but it is clear the other approaches aren't getting the job done, thus other
>> intervention concepts must now be considered. With all due respect to
>> efforts (and recently here in this group) to define and use the term
>> geoengineering, I think it very unfortunate to call CDR "engineering" since
>> it implies existing, established, off-the-self scientific and engineering
>> knowledge that can be applied to the problem rather than ideas or concepts
>> whose safety, cost, and effectiveness of application are poorly understood
>> and need considerably more scientific, social, and economic research before
>> they can even be considered for application.
>>
>> I think that the preceding is the root of much of the pushback on concepts
>> lumped under geoengineering (ETC, etc): the false impression that such
>> methods are established engineering ready to be unleashed on the world by
>> its clandestine practitioners, when in fact this is at best a nascent
>> science that has yet to be fully applied in addressing the critical
>> questions about safety, capacity, cost, social and environmental benefit,
>> etc. For obvious reason, "geoscience" doesn't fill the bill as an umbrella
>> term either since it is used in other contexts.
>>
>> In any case I have abandoned the use of geoengineering in my writing and
>> presentations in favor of terms that more specifically describe the CO2
>> management concepts under discussion, and I most certainly will not mention
>> CDR and SRM concepts in the same breath due to their very different
>> approaches to different problems - climate vs CO2. In any case I am very
>> glad that CDR is finally and officially on the table, hopefully as a topic
>> of research and not one of engineering (yet).
>>
>> Greg
>> From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on
>> behalf of Andrew Lockley [andrew.lock...@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 11:44 AM
>> To: geoengineering
>> Subject: [geo] Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC?
>>
>> http://gu.com/p/3j54t
>> Why has geoengineering been legitimised by the IPCC?
> <snip>
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