Hi Joe Sorry for such a late response, it's been sitting there half-cooked for awhile. I'm prompted by Robert's post on food miles. Anyway...
>Exactly my point Keith; > >Eventually when the rest of the plant decomposes the CO2 finds its way >back to the atmosphere. The earth found a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 >and it took her many millions of years to do it. We in our wisdom have >found a way to undo her work in a few decades! We are stuck with climate >change unless we find an equally efficient method of locking up CO2 and >by this I don't mean pumping it into underground caverns or defunct oil >wells. The earth has in effect been to us as a wound up spring storing >up the solar energy from millions of years in concentrated forms, oil >being only one of them. We have been releasing the spring rather >quickly and since energy is neither created nor destroyed we find we are > in effect winding other springs in the process, springs which have a >much shorter time constant like tornadoes and hurricanes. Perhaps it is >time we took a hint from nature. Plants are ingenious agents of solar >energy conversion and storage. I hate the arrogance we have in placing >so much faith in our stupid science. Look where we have come. We are not >smart. With brute force and ignorance working at the marco level we have >done this carnage and now in our ifinite wisdom we want to start >meddling at the nano and genetic level to show how clever we are! >Perhaps it's time we just took a breather and took a look at the example >eveloution has worked out and maybe instead of being so bold we could >humble ourselves and just copy the master's work. We're still trundling along with the distinctly pre-post-modern idea that nature is just crude stuff that needs refinement and technological improvement before it's truly fit for human consumption, sort of stuck in the 1950s Reader's Digest point of view. I think a lot of money goes into keeping that mindset lodged in our brains like a prion. You use the right words - arrogance, brute force, ignorance. But I think that has more to do with those who've paid science's piper for the last 100 years and think they own everything than with science itself, or indeed than with us - that's THEM you're talking about. And THEY are not going to solve this problem, they'll only make it worse. WE have to solve it. I think we probably can, even at this late stage, or at least lessen the impact. As somebody said here awhile back, no need to fight them, just build them out of your system. Think globally, act locally, small is beautiful. Have a look at this, for instance: http://www.foodshare.net/garden13.htm Foodshare > > > Garden Compost and CO2 Not only does it have agricultural benefits, but composting also combats climate change. When plant wastes are sent to landfills they turn into carbon dioxide and methane, two of the most common greenhouse gasses. When those plants are composted, they lock up carbon from the atmosphere for decades! And when you compost and add that compost to your garden's soil, you are also sequestering additional carbon dioxide. Here's a brief look at how compost can help us in the one tonne challenge, courtesy of an excerpt from an article by the late Donella Meadows. THE GLOBAL CITIZEN: How Much Greenhouse Gas Does Your Garden Cut? Donella H. Meadows, AlterNet November 6, 2000 ) Here, for you gardeners who want to quantify your own contribution to the climate -- and for policymakers who'd like to reward farmers for climate-stabilizing behavior -- is how he went about it [estimating compost's carbon credits]. "The biggest uncertainty relates to how deep the organic matter is going into the soil. I assume that the change in soil organic matter is confined to the top 8 inches. I suspect that you're actually leaching humus into deeper soil, which would affect the result a lot. So this is a conservative estimate." A silt-loam soil weighs roughly 85 pounds per cubic foot. Eight inches of it weighs 56 pounds per square foot. Organic matter is about 58 percent carbon. So soil with one percent organic matter contains (hmmm, one percent of 58 percent of 56 pounds) 0.3 pounds of carbon per square foot. Soil with 7.7 percent organic matter contains 2.5 pounds of carbon per square foot. David and Judy have increased the amount of carbon in every square foot of their garden by 2.2 pounds. It's a big garden, 0.4 acres. (Actually it's a communal garden, which David and Judy share with their neighbors.) That's 17,424 square feet. Multiply by 2.2 pounds of carbon per square foot -- let's see here -- that makes over 38,000 pounds of carbon removed from the atmosphere -- 19 tons! Jon writes to David: "You have sequestered 19 tons of carbon into your garden over the last 10 years. This is impressive! The average American releases 6 to 6.5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. So you have offset about three years of an average American's emissions." For more info on reducing CO2 emissions, see our report "Fighting Global Warming at the Farmer's Market". http://www.foodshare.net/resource/files/ACF230.pdf ------ Heavily composted soil with a high organic matter content will sustain much more growth than poor soil with a low organic matter content, sequestering yet more carbon in all the green stuff growing above the soil as well as in the extra humus beneath the surface. Make compost and grow food. The "Fighting Global Warming at the Farmer's Market" report is an interesting study of food miles and CO2 emissions: "... The CO2 emissions caused by transporting food locally is 0.118 kg, while the emissions caused by importing those exact same foods is 11kg. Over the course of a year, if you were to buy only locally produced food, the associated CO2 emissions would be .006316 tonnes. If instead you were to buy only imported foods like those studied here, the associated CO2 emissions would be .573 tonnes." Imported food releases 90 times as much carbon as locally grown food. As with food miles, so with fuel miles, they're closely related issues. It's a greening problem: we have to green everything, or re-green it. Greening cities, greening rooftops, greening wasteland, with city farms and community farms, composting and recycling all organic wastes, and greening everything else too. It's happening, fast in some areas, eg.: >In the world's largest study into sustainable agriculture, Jules >Pretty, professor of environment and society at the University of >Essex (UK) analysed more than 200 projects in 52 countries. He found >that more than four million farms were involved -- 3 per cent of >fields in the Third World. And, most remarkably, average increases >in crop yields were 73 per cent. Sustainable agriculture, Pretty >concludes, has most to offer to small farms. Its methods are "cheap, >use locally available technology and often improve the environment. >Above all they most help the people who need help the most -- poor >farmers and their families, who make up the majority of the world's >hungry people." >See: "Reducing Food Poverty with Sustainable Agriculture: A Summary >of New Evidence" Centre for Environment and Society, University of >Essex >http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/ResearchProgrammes/SAFEWexecsummfinalreport.htm > >"47 Portraits of Sustainable Agriculture Projects and Initiatives" >Centre for Environment and Society, University of Essex >http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/ResearchProgrammes/SAFEW47casessusag.htm > >Update: >http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2006/40/i04/abs/es051670d.html >Resource-Conserving Agriculture Increases Yields in Developing Countries >December 21, 2005 > >"Most of the programs we are talking about happened despite the >policy, instead of there being one," Pretty says. As with farming, so with forestry, or agro-forestry, and as with food, so with fuel. IMHO small-scale local community-level biofuels projects are spreading just as fast in just as many places, though nobody measures it (nor could). Hence our work here with micro-ley farming systems and integrated biofuels production, also Pannirselvam's interest in Brazil, and much besides. True carbon costs must inevitably hit home, along with true cost accounting, and I don't think it will take very long. How can the madness of food miles survive real carbon costs? There's no financial edge left in butter-exporting countries importing butter and so on when you measure the emissions the way the Canadian project above did it, and have to pay for them. Same for exporting palm-oil biodiesel from Indonesia and Malaysia to Japan and the EU, as widely planned, or burning large amounts of fossil fuels pushing up monocropped soybeans in the US, then using tons more energy trucking it to a central processing plant, and then trucking the biodiesel all over the country. As with food miles, does NBB-scale industrialised biodiesel account for 90 times the carbon emissions of what you brew in your backyard from WVO? Somehow I don't there'll be any big rush to measure it, but the difference will be there and it will be substantial. Eventually it will rear its head. Never mind the WVO, local farmers can easily produce the oil right there, potentially with zero fossil-fuel inputs, and there are local coops doing this, or planning to. High carbon costs tip the balance in favour of small local production, such as family-sized farms using sustainable systems, making lots of compost, producing lots of biomass and lots of biodiversity with it, and the same for biofuel. I don't think re-greening the planet is beyond our capacities. We've been causing galloping soil erosion wordwide for 80 years and more. Soil loss is one of the chief causes in history of civilisations failing. If our civilisation insists on failing the same way I'll change my tune and finally admit that we're as dumb as some people say we are, because unlike previous civilisations that failed because they abused their soil, we do know how to do it properly, and indefinitely. The only reason we don't do it is that it doesn't suit THEM. World Trade Organisation-brand world trade and the corporate globalisation style of wealth extraction and cost externalisation demands a different kind of land exploitation, the industrialised model. As a result you can stand at just about any river mouth in the world and watch the farms go by on their way out to sea. But it all depends on cheap and abundant fossil-fuel energy, and that's over now - even if the supplies weren't dwindling the carbon costs are too high. So let's take over and green the place again like it should be. It can be fast - David in the Canadian example sequestered 19 tons of carbon in 10 years in his garden by making compost. I've sequestered a lot more than that, I'm not the only one here who could say that, and I don't know how many people have been inspired to start composting by visiting the Journey to Forever website, but it's a lot, though probably not as many as those making biodiesel. We're not the only ones, there's been a greening movement spreading worldwide and growing fast for at least 10 years, really gathering momentum in the last three or four. How will a Gaia with a largely repaired lung capacity cope with the industrial CO2 levels of the Age of Waste? Surely a lot better than one missing half its topsoil and half its biomass, or whatever it is now. "Four billion years ago, the sun was about 30% less bright than it is now; yet temperatures were close to those we have today. With the sun brilliance slowly increasing over the eons, the temperature of our planet has remained approximately constant and life has continued to exist." With temporary local difficulties but it always returns to normal - even when the sun gets hotter. "The method that Gaia uses to keep the Earth at the right temperature is the control of the amount of 'greenhouse' gases in the atmosphere; mainly carbon dioxide (CO2)." http://www.aspoitalia.net/aspoenglish/documents/bardi/gaia.html GAIA'S FEVER If Gaia can do that it can probably attend to this current small matter of excess carbon, though it's a little sudden by comparison, only 300 years or so compared with four billion. Whatever, a re-greened and thoroughly composted biosphere is surely the first goal, and it's achieavable. >Sorry for venting....I feel (only) a little better now. :-) Best Keith >Joe > > > >Keith Addison wrote: > >snip > > > > > But the reduction is only temporary, in the end it all returns to the > > atmosphere anyway -- see "[Biofuel] CO2 emissions" for a good > > explanation from Tom Kelly: > > http://snipurl.com/rmgo > > Sat Jun 10 2006 _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
