Re: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited

[rongretlarson]

Mark (cc Greg, list) 

See insert responses below. 

- Original Message -
From: markcap...@podenergy.org 
To: rongretlar...@comcast.net 
Cc: r...@llnl.gov, "geoengineering"  
Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2012 5:59:17 AM 
Subject: RE: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited 


Ron, 

How perfect is the nutrient recycling when you convert macroalgae to charcol? 
[RWL: A good question that I am not qualified to answer. 

One thought is that it seems the present ocean has considerable excess nitrogen 
and phosphorus, and that land-based agriculture and forestry need these in 
large amounts. So, to the extent that conversion of the macroalgae is to char 
which ends up on land, recycling these two excess nutrients out of the ocean - 
would seem to be entirely desirable. 

A second train of thought going around the biochar community is that coupling 
char with appropriate sea-salts will add to biochar's value. I can conceive, 
but this needs checking, that char from ocean-based macroalgae would find favor 
among biochar users because of a larger amount of many micronutrients. 


Is there any energy left over after you lift the macroalgae (and some water) 
out of the water and remove all the water from the macroalgae in order to make 
char? 
[RWL: Again, I do not claim to be expert on this. But I have seen the concept 
of macroalgae being used for conversion to biofuels since the mid-'70s. Indeed 
in one major 100% RE study from that period (MITRE or SRI?) most of the world 
fuel liquid market was projected to come from macroalgae. Sure, micanthus, 
sugar cane, etc are "woodier", but the main issue is the photosynthetic carbon 
productivity (kg C/sqm-yr). In my experience, pyrolysis can handle anything 
that biogas can. I think the Cool Planet pyrolysis approach gives a larger 
total of valuable C product - as there is little CO2 production. 

I hope we can hear from anyone thinking the idea of macroalgae cannot be both a 
major energy and sequestration option. 

Ron] 


Mark 


 Original Message  
Subject: Re: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient 
limited 
From: rongretlar...@comcast.net 
Date: Tue, October 02, 2012 9:32 pm 
To: markcap...@podenergy.org 
Cc: r...@llnl.gov , geoengineering < geoengineering@googlegroups.com > 


Mark, Greg, List 

I like your idea and will start looking up the macroalgae citations found at 
your site. 

But I suggest (as did Greg Rau) that you investigate the biochar alternative to 
your proposed conversion through biogas. I see three main benefits to biochar 
over your CCS option as it impacts the Carbon Dioxide Removal portion of this 
list. First is that liquifying and deep-sequestering the accompanying CO2 seems 
unlikely to be ready soon - and will always be pretty expensive (especially at 
small scale). More importantly, char obtained from pyrolyzing your macroalgae 
will provide out-year benefits from up to millenia. Lastly, natural gas 
transport to the mainland seems likely to involve considerable expense - more 
so than moving a solid or liquid. 

Your possible project in Fiji could have a valuable char side immediately, 
while a BECCS approach seems likely to be many years away - so you will be 
foregoing the promising sequestration potential of ocean biomass that Greg is 
looking for. 

A good place to see the current status of pyrolysis and biochar at what seems 
to be the leading commercial biochar (and biofuel?) entity is only 20 miles 
east of you. Look at (I have no connection): 
www.coolplanetbiofuels.com 

Ron 
- Original Message -
From: markcap...@podenergy.org 
To: r...@llnl.gov , "geoengineering" < geoengineering@googlegroups.com > 
Sent: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 7:05:42 PM 
Subject: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited 


Greg, 


Another solution is rapid nutrient recycling, as happens in the Ocean 
Afforestation ecosystem. 


Deploying the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem over 4% of the world's ocean 
surface would imply cycling about 16 times the global artificial nitrogen plant 
fertilizer production. The recycle will happen over distances of a few 
kilometers and time scales of a few months. The ecosystem would also be cycling 
proportional masses of all the other nutrients needed to grow macroalgae. 

Perhaps more important than nutrients, land plants are limited by fresh water 
and the timing of fresh water (no good to rain in August if the corn kernel 
silks lacked water to deploy July). 


Mark E. Capron, PE 
Oxnard, California 
www.PODenergy.org 




 Original Message  
Subject: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited 
From: "Rau, Greg" < r...@llnl.gov > 
Date: Tue, October 02, 2012 10:53 am 
To: geoengineering < geoengineering@googlegroups.com > 



Possible solutions: 
fertilize 
genetically select/modify 
reduce CO2 recycling (CROPS, Biochar) 
all of the above. 
Greg 


Nature | News 



Earth’s carbon sink downsized 

Abundance of soil 

RE: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited

[markcapron]

Ron,
 
How perfect is the nutrient recycling when you convert macroalgae to charcol?
 
Is there any energy left over after you lift the macroalgae (and some water) out of the water and remove all the water from the macroalgae in order to make char?
Mark 

 Original Message Subject: Re: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrientlimitedFrom: rongretlar...@comcast.netDate: Tue, October 02, 2012 9:32 pmTo: markcap...@podenergy.orgCc: r...@llnl.gov, geoengineering 


Mark,  Greg, List   I like your idea and will start looking up the macroalgae citations found at your site.       But I suggest (as did Greg Rau) that you investigate the biochar alternative to your proposed conversion through biogas.  I see three main benefits to biochar over your CCS option as it impacts the Carbon Dioxide Removal portion of this list.  First is that liquifying and deep-sequestering the accompanying CO2 seems unlikely to be ready soon - and will always be pretty expensive (especially at small scale).   More importantly,  char obtained from pyrolyzing your macroalgae will provide out-year benefits from up to millenia.  Lastly, natural gas transport to the mainland seems likely to involve considerable expense - more so than moving a solid or liquid.    Your possible project in Fiji could have a valuable char side immediately, while a BECCS approach seems likely to be many years away - so you will be foregoing the promising sequestration potential of ocean biomass that Greg is looking for.   A good place to see the current status of pyrolysis and biochar at what seems to be the leading commercial biochar (and biofuel?) entity is only 20 miles east of you.  Look at  (I have no connection):   www.coolplanetbiofuels.com   Ron

From: markcap...@podenergy.orgTo: r...@llnl.gov, "geoengineering" Sent: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 7:05:42 PMSubject: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited
Greg,
 

Another solution is rapid nutrient recycling, as happens in the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem.
 

Deploying the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem over 4% of the world's ocean surface would imply cycling about 16 times the global artificial nitrogen plant fertilizer production.  The recycle will happen over distances of a few kilometers and time scales of a few months.  The ecosystem would also be cycling proportional masses of all the other nutrients needed to grow macroalgae.
 
Perhaps more important than nutrients, land plants are limited by fresh water and the timing of fresh water (no good to rain in August if the corn kernel silks lacked water to deploy July).

 
Mark E. Capron, PEOxnard, Californiawww.PODenergy.org
 
 

 Original Message Subject: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limitedFrom: "Rau, Greg" Date: Tue, October 02, 2012 10:53 amTo: geoengineering 

Possible solutions: 
fertilize
genetically select/modify
reduce CO2 recycling (CROPS, Biochar)
all of the above.
Greg

Nature | News




Earth’s carbon sink downsized
Abundance of soil nutrients a limiting factor in plants’ ability to soak up carbon dioxide.

Amanda Mascarelli
01 October 2012
Plants need enriched soil to make use of increasing carbon dioxide.
As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to climb, most climate models project that the world’s oceans and trees will keep soaking up more than half of the extra CO2. But researchers report this week that the capacity for land plants to absorb more CO2 will be much lower than previously thought, owing to limitations in soil nutrients1.

Because plants take up CO2 during photosynthesis, it has long been assumed that they will provide a large carbon ‘sink’ to help offset increases in atmospheric CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Some scientists have argued that the increase might even be good for plants, which would presumably grow faster and mop up even more CO2. Climate models estimate that the world’s oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO2 that humans have released in the past 150 years and that land plants have gulped another 30%.
But the latest study, by ecologists Peter Reich and Sarah Hobbie at the University of Minnesota in St Paul, suggests that estimates of how much CO2 land plants can use are far too optimistic. Plants also need soil nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to grow. But few studies have tested whether soils contain enough of these nutrients to fuel growth in proportion to rising CO2.
“This work addresses a question that’s been out there for decades,” says Bruce Hungate, an ecosystem scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "It's a hard question to answer, because it takes a long time to see how ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycles change."
Long-term growth
In a 13-year field experiment on 296 open-air plots, the researchers grew perennial grassland species under ambient and elevated concentra

Re: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited

[rongretlarson]

Mark, Greg, List 

I like your idea and will start looking up the macroalgae citations found at 
your site. 

But I suggest (as did Greg Rau) that you investigate the biochar alternative to 
your proposed conversion through biogas. I see three main benefits to biochar 
over your CCS option as it impacts the Carbon Dioxide Removal portion of this 
list. First is that liquifying and deep-sequestering the accompanying CO2 seems 
unlikely to be ready soon - and will always be pretty expensive (especially at 
small scale). More importantly, char obtained from pyrolyzing your macroalgae 
will provide out-year benefits from up to millenia. Lastly, natural gas 
transport to the mainland seems likely to involve considerable expense - more 
so than moving a solid or liquid. 

Your possible project in Fiji could have a valuable char side immediately, 
while a BECCS approach seems likely to be many years away - so you will be 
foregoing the promising sequestration potential of ocean biomass that Greg is 
looking for. 

A good place to see the current status of pyrolysis and biochar at what seems 
to be the leading commercial biochar (and biofuel?) entity is only 20 miles 
east of you. Look at (I have no connection): 
www.coolplanetbiofuels.com 

Ron 
- Original Message -
From: markcap...@podenergy.org 
To: r...@llnl.gov, "geoengineering"  
Sent: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 7:05:42 PM 
Subject: Oceans? RE: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited 


Greg, 


Another solution is rapid nutrient recycling, as happens in the Ocean 
Afforestation ecosystem. 


Deploying the Ocean Afforestation ecosystem over 4% of the world's ocean 
surface would imply cycling about 16 times the global artificial nitrogen plant 
fertilizer production. The recycle will happen over distances of a few 
kilometers and time scales of a few months. The ecosystem would also be cycling 
proportional masses of all the other nutrients needed to grow macroalgae. 

Perhaps more important than nutrients, land plants are limited by fresh water 
and the timing of fresh water (no good to rain in August if the corn kernel 
silks lacked water to deploy July). 


Mark E. Capron, PE 
Oxnard, California 
www.PODenergy.org 




 Original Message  
Subject: [geo] Natural land air capture nutrient limited 
From: "Rau, Greg" < r...@llnl.gov > 
Date: Tue, October 02, 2012 10:53 am 
To: geoengineering < geoengineering@googlegroups.com > 



Possible solutions: 
fertilize 
genetically select/modify 
reduce CO2 recycling (CROPS, Biochar) 
all of the above. 
Greg 


Nature | News 



Earth’s carbon sink downsized 

Abundance of soil nutrients a limiting factor in plants’ ability to soak up 
carbon dioxide. 

• Amanda Mascarelli 

01 October 2012 
Plants need enriched soil to make use of increasing carbon dioxide. 
As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to climb, most climate 
models project that the world’s oceans and trees will keep soaking up more than 
half of the extra CO 2 . But researchers report this week that the capacity for 
land plants to absorb more CO 2 will be much lower than previously thought, 
owing to limitations in soil nutrients 1 . 

Because plants take up CO 2 during photosynthesis, it has long been assumed 
that they will provide a large carbon ‘sink’ to help offset increases in 
atmospheric CO 2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Some scientists have 
argued that the increase might even be good for plants, which would presumably 
grow faster and mop up even more CO 2 . Climate models estimate that the 
world’s oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO 2 that humans have released in 
the past 150 years and that land plants have gulped another 30%. 
But the latest study, by ecologists Peter Reich and Sarah Hobbie at the 
University of Minnesota in St Paul, suggests that estimates of how much CO 2 
land plants can use are far too optimistic. Plants also need soil nutrients, 
such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to grow. But few studies have tested whether 
soils contain enough of these nutrients to fuel growth in proportion to rising 
CO 2 . 
“This work addresses a question that’s been out there for decades,” says Bruce 
Hungate, an ecosystem scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. 
"It's a hard question to answer, because it takes a long time to see how 
ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycles change." Long-term growth 

In a 13-year field experiment on 296 open-air plots, the researchers grew 
perennial grassland species under ambient and elevated concentrations of both 
atmospheric CO 2 and soil nitrogen. 
“Rather than building a time machine and comparing how ecosystems behave in 
2070 — which is hard to do — we basically create the atmosphere of 2070 above 
our plots,” says Reich. 
Reich and Hobbie found that from 2001 to 2010, grasses growing under heightened 
CO 2 levels grew only half as much in untreated as in enriched nitrogen soils. 
Researchers do not have a firm grasp on the comple

[geo] Significant contribution to climate warming from the permafrost carbon feedback : Nature Geoscience : Nature Publishing Group

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n10/full/ngeo1573.html

Significant contribution to climate warming from the permafrost carbon
feedback

Andrew H. MacDougall, Christopher A. Avis & Andrew J. Weaver

Nature Geoscience 5, 719–721 (2012)

doi:10.1038/ngeo1573
Received 04 May 2012
Accepted 10 August 2012
Published online 09 September 2012

Abstract

Permafrost soils contain an estimated 1,700 Pg of carbon, almost twice the
present atmospheric carbon pool1. As permafrost soils thaw owing to climate
warming, respiration of organic matter within these soils will transfer
carbon to the atmosphere, potentially leading to a positive feedback.
Models in which the carbon cycle is uncoupled from the atmosphere, together
with one-dimensional models, suggest that permafrost soils could release
7–138 Pg carbon by 2100 (refs 3, 4). Here, we use a coupled global climate
model to quantify the magnitude of the warming generated by the feedback
between permafrost carbon release and climate. According to our
simulations, permafrost soils will release between 68 and 508 Pg carbon by
2100. We show that the additional surface warming generated by the feedback
between permafrost carbon and climate is independent of the pathway of
anthropogenic emissions followed in the twenty-first century. We estimate
that this feedback could result in an additional warming of 0.13–1.69 °C by
2300. We further show that the upper bound for the strength of the feedback
is reached under the less intensive emissions pathways. We suggest that
permafrost carbon release could lead to significant warming, even under
less intensive emissions trajectories

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[geo] Permafrost runaway quantified (and it's bad news)

[Andrew Lockley]

See below for reasonably convincing numerical treatment of the permafrost
runaway event. It claims to shows that, with political and technological
lag, we are likely to cross the tipping point and will be powerless to stop
runaway climate change without geoengineering

A
 -- Forwarded message --
From: "ClimateSight" 
Date: Oct 3, 2012 4:10 AM
Subject: [New post] Permafrost Projections
To: 

**
  climatesight posted: "During my summer at UVic, two PhD students at the
lab (Andrew MacDougall and Chris Avis) as well as my supervisor (Andrew
Weaver) wrote a paper modelling the permafrost carbon feedback, which was
recently published in Nature Geoscience. I read a draft ver"Respond to
this post by replying above this line
  New post on *ClimateSight*
  Permafrost
Projections
by
climatesight 

During my summer at UVic, two PhD students at the lab (Andrew MacDougall
and Chris Avis) as well as my supervisor (Andrew Weaver) wrote a paper
modelling the permafrost carbon feedback, which was recently published
in *Nature
Geoscience* .
I read a draft version of this paper several months ago, and am very
excited to finally share it here.

Studying the permafrost carbon feedback is at once exciting (because it has
been left out of climate models for so long) and terrifying (because it has
the potential to be a real game-changer). There is about twice as much
carbon frozen into permafrost than there is floating around in the entire
atmosphere. As high CO2 levels cause the world to warm, some of the
permafrost will thaw and release this carbon as more CO2 - causing more
warming, and so on. Previous climate model simulations involving permafrost
have measured the CO2 released during thaw, but haven't actually applied it
to the atmosphere and allowed it to change the climate. This UVic study is
the first to close that feedback loop (in climate model speak we call this
"fully coupled").

The permafrost part of the land component was already in place - it was
developed for Chris's PhD thesis, and implemented in a previous
paper.
It involves converting the existing single-layer soil model to a
multi-layer model where some layers can be frozen year-round. Also, instead
of the four 
RCPscenarios,
the authors used DEPs (Diagnosed Emission Pathways): exactly the
same as RCPs, except that CO2 *emissions*, rather than concentrations, are
given to the model as input. This was necessary so that extra emissions
from permafrost thaw would be taken into account by concentration values
calculated at the time.

As a result, permafrost added an extra 44, 104, 185, and 279 ppm of CO2 to
the atmosphere for DEP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 respectively. However, the
extra warming by 2100 was about the same for each DEP, with central
estimates around 0.25 °C. Interestingly, the logarithmic effect of CO2 on
climate (adding 10 ppm to the atmosphere causes more warming when the
background concentration is 300 ppm than when it is 400 ppm) managed to
cancel out the increasing amounts of permafrost thaw. By 2300, the central
estimates of extra warming were more variable, and ranged from 0.13 to 1.69
°C when full uncertainty ranges were taken into account. Altering climate
sensitivity (by means of an artificial feedback), in particular, had a
large effect.

As a result of the thawing permafrost, the land switched from a carbon sink
(net CO2 absorber) to a carbon source (net CO2 emitter) decades earlier
than it would have otherwise - before 2100 for every DEP. The ocean kept
absorbing carbon, but in some scenarios the carbon source of the land
outweighed the carbon sink of the ocean. That is, even without human
emissions, the land was emitting more CO2 than the ocean could soak up.
Concentrations kept climbing indefinitely, even if human emissions suddenly
dropped to zero. This is the part of the paper that made me want to hide
under my desk.

This scenario wasn't too hard to reach, either - if climate sensitivity was
greater than 3°C warming per doubling of CO2 (about a 50% chance, as 3°C is
the median estimate by scientists today), and people followed DEP 8.5 to at
least 2013 before stopping all emissions (a very intense scenario, but I
wouldn't underestimate our ability to dig up fossil fuels and burn them
really fast), permafrost thaw ensured that CO2 concentrations kept rising
on their own in a self-sustaining loop. The scenarios didn't run past 2300,
but I'm sure that if you left it long enough the ocean would eventually win
and CO2 would start to fall. The ocean always wins in the end, but things
can be pretty nasty until then.

As if that weren't enough, the paper goes on to list a whole