Adaptive Responses to Peak Oil
by John Michael Greer
The Archdruid Report (November 21 2007)
Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society
One of the occupational hazards of writing a blog on the future of industrial civilization, I've discovered, is the occasional incoming missive from somebody with a plan to save the world. My inbox fielded another of those the other day. As worldsaving plans go, this one is relatively modest, and by no means entirely misguided.
My correspondent hopes to convince the American people, or at least some portion thereof, to resettle in largely self-sufficient villages of 5000 to 10,000 people, compact enough that nobody will need to own or use a car. Each village owns enough land around it to feed its population, using edible forest crops and the like as the basis for subsistence. There's a good deal more; you can find the rest of the details on the website my correspondent recommended: http://villageforum.com/
Taken in the abstract, this is a great plan, and I suspect that a fair number of my readers would be as pleased as I would to move into such a village. As usual, though, the devil is in the details, and it's as ugly a devil as ever graced a medieval morality play. Like those theatrical devils, though, this one has his uses. A close look at why my correspondent's plan won't save civilization from peak oil makes a good introduction to a theme that will be central to most of the next year or so of Archdruid Report posts - the question of how to craft an adaptive response to the coming of the deindustrial age.
It's a rich word, "adaptive". In the jargon of evolutionary biology, it refers to anything that allows an organism to respond effectively to the demands of its environment. When the environment is stable, what makes an organism adaptive stays pretty much the same from generation to generation. When the environment changes, though, what's adaptive can change as well, sometimes radically; genetic variations that would have been problematic under the old conditions become advantages under the new; if the shift is large enough, a new species emerges. This points up the other, dictionary definition of the word - according to my Webster's Ninth, "showing or having a capacity for or tendency toward adaptation".
Both these meanings have crucial relevance to the work ahead of us as industrial society skids down the far side of Hubbert's peak. On the one hand, it's crucial to find ways of living that are adaptive in the ecological sense - that is, well suited to the new reality of a world of scarce energy and hard environmental limits. At the same time, we won't simply be landing plump in that new reality overnight, nor do we know in advance exactly what that new reality will look like, so it's just as crucial to find ways of living that are adaptive in the dictionary sense - that is, capable of adapting to the unpredictable changes of a world in transition.
The problem with my correspondent's plan is that it may be adaptive in one sense, but it's not adaptive at all in the other. It seems quite likely that a network of largely independent towns with populations in the 5000 to 10,000 range might be well adapted to the human and natural environments of a deindustrialized world, though that's a guess at this stage of the process. It's the process of getting there that's the difficulty.
Let's look at the numbers for a moment. Assume a population of 8000 and an average of four persons per family, and you need 2000 new homes for the community. We'll assume that these homes are cheaper than the median US home - say, $250,000 apiece on average. That gives you a startup cost of $500 million. Add to that the cost of community infrastructure - everything from water and electricity to a school, a library, and the like - not to mention the farmland surrounding the village, and you've roughly doubled your price tag to $1 billion.
Even if half your residents own their own homes now and can pay for their new housing out of their equity - not a likely situation in the midst of today's housing crash and credit crunch - and all the residents put in a great deal of sweat equity in the form of unpaid labor building the village, it's still going to cost a great deal. If you had 2000 families committed enough to the project to risk their financial future on it, it might nonetheless be possible to make it happen. Still, that's a huge risk, and it's made even larger by the fact that the new village is going to have to provide jobs for all its adult residents - part of the point of the exercise is that nobody owns a car, remember, so commuting to the nearest city is out.
Nor can the village's inhabitants count on being magically transported to a deindustrial world, where they can simply harvest their edible forest crops and barter skills among themselves. For many years to come, they will have bills to pay - not least the costs incurred in setting up the village - and national, state, and local taxes as well. Will the new village be able to provide its residents jobs that will insure their financial survival? Many small towns in the same population range are failing to do that right now. Behind the attractive image of a self-sufficient village in the countryside, in other words, lies the hard reality of a $1 billion gamble for survival against serious economic odds.
That $1 billion gamble, furthermore, would at best only take 8000 people out of the automobile economy - few enough that statistical noise will cover any impact they might have on the larger picture. Imagine a program to take ten percent of the US population out of the automobile economy instead; that's the sort of scale such a program would need in order to have any measurable effect on the fate of industrial society. The price tag there would be around $3.8 trillion in direct costs, plus the huge indirect costs involved in abandoning or relocating ten percent of the country's existing housing stock, residential and community infrastructure, and so on. It would take years, and possibly generations, for the savings in petroleum costs to make up for the huge initial outlay, and if the program turned out not to work - if, for whatever reason, the world on the far side of Hubbert's peak turned out not to be suited to villages of the sort my correspondent envisions - all that outlay would have been wasted.
Now my correspondent's plan is far from the most extreme example of this kind of unadaptive thinking. The poster children here are the dwindling tribe of technology fans who believe that fusion power will save us if we only commit enough money to research. It's been well over half a century since the first attempts to make a viable fusion reactor got under way, and the only working example in the solar system is still 93,000,000 miles away from Earth, rising in the eastern skies every morning as it turns hydrogen into helium at its own unhurried pace. We have absolutely no certainty that another trillion dollars of investment will get us any closer to commercially viable fusion power, and if the gamble fails, industrial society is left twisting in the wind with a great deal of empty space beneath its feet.
The problem shared by these, and so many other proposed responses to the predicament of industrial society, is that they aren't adaptive in the second, dictionary sense. They bet the farm on a single strategy, and if that fails, there is no plan B. Such plans look good on paper, but that's usually as far as they go, because the factors in the human and natural environment that would make them possible simply aren't there. For some forty years now, for instance, people have been talking about village communities like the ones my correspondent described. Very few have even been started, fewer have been built, and the ones that have become viable communities can be counted on the fingers of one foot.
What sort of response to the emerging crisis of the industrial world would count as adaptive? We'll be talking about that for quite a number of posts to come, but a few suggestions might be worth making at this point.
First, an adaptive response is scalable - that is, it can be started and tested on a very small scale, with a minimal investment of resources, and then expanded from there if it proves to work. A fusion reactor is not scalable; you either have one, after trillions of dollars of further investment, or you don't. My correspondent's village proposal is a good deal more scalable than this, but even so it's impossible to give it a try without at least a few hundred families and quite a bit of money. What we need, by contrast, are responses that can start out with individuals committing only the money, resources and time they can easily spare.
Second, an adaptive response is modular - that is, it can be broken down into distinct elements, each of which functions on its own without needing the involvement of all the other parts. That allows something that doesn't work well to be swapped out without disrupting the rest of the system; it also allows elements suited to one stage of the deindustrializing process to be replaced with something else when that stage gives way to another. Think of the difference between a machine and a toolkit. A machine either does the job or it doesn't, and if the job changes, you usually have to replace the entire tool. If you have a toolkit, by contrast, the jobs that can't be done with one tool can usually be done with another.
Third, an adaptive response is open - that is, it can be combined freely with other approaches to the challenges of the future and the enduring predicaments of human existence. None of us can know in advance what belief systems, socioeconomic arrangements, and lifestyle choices will turn out to be most adaptive at each stage of the decline of industrial society. Locking a response into one particular set of approaches limits its usefulness, and could lead people in the future to jettison valuable options because they have become too thoroughly entangled with a dysfunctional economic system or a discredited ideology.
These characteristics look back toward some of the issues already discussed in this blog, but they also open unfamiliar doors. As we peer through those doors in the weeks and months to come, it might be possible to glimpse something of what adaptive responses to the predicament of the industrial world might look like.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2007/11/adaptive-responses-to-peak-oil.html
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
The Archdruid Report (November 21 2007)
Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society
One of the occupational hazards of writing a blog on the future of industrial civilization, I've discovered, is the occasional incoming missive from somebody with a plan to save the world. My inbox fielded another of those the other day. As worldsaving plans go, this one is relatively modest, and by no means entirely misguided.
My correspondent hopes to convince the American people, or at least some portion thereof, to resettle in largely self-sufficient villages of 5000 to 10,000 people, compact enough that nobody will need to own or use a car. Each village owns enough land around it to feed its population, using edible forest crops and the like as the basis for subsistence. There's a good deal more; you can find the rest of the details on the website my correspondent recommended: http://villageforum.com/
Taken in the abstract, this is a great plan, and I suspect that a fair number of my readers would be as pleased as I would to move into such a village. As usual, though, the devil is in the details, and it's as ugly a devil as ever graced a medieval morality play. Like those theatrical devils, though, this one has his uses. A close look at why my correspondent's plan won't save civilization from peak oil makes a good introduction to a theme that will be central to most of the next year or so of Archdruid Report posts - the question of how to craft an adaptive response to the coming of the deindustrial age.
It's a rich word, "adaptive". In the jargon of evolutionary biology, it refers to anything that allows an organism to respond effectively to the demands of its environment. When the environment is stable, what makes an organism adaptive stays pretty much the same from generation to generation. When the environment changes, though, what's adaptive can change as well, sometimes radically; genetic variations that would have been problematic under the old conditions become advantages under the new; if the shift is large enough, a new species emerges. This points up the other, dictionary definition of the word - according to my Webster's Ninth, "showing or having a capacity for or tendency toward adaptation".
Both these meanings have crucial relevance to the work ahead of us as industrial society skids down the far side of Hubbert's peak. On the one hand, it's crucial to find ways of living that are adaptive in the ecological sense - that is, well suited to the new reality of a world of scarce energy and hard environmental limits. At the same time, we won't simply be landing plump in that new reality overnight, nor do we know in advance exactly what that new reality will look like, so it's just as crucial to find ways of living that are adaptive in the dictionary sense - that is, capable of adapting to the unpredictable changes of a world in transition.
The problem with my correspondent's plan is that it may be adaptive in one sense, but it's not adaptive at all in the other. It seems quite likely that a network of largely independent towns with populations in the 5000 to 10,000 range might be well adapted to the human and natural environments of a deindustrialized world, though that's a guess at this stage of the process. It's the process of getting there that's the difficulty.
Let's look at the numbers for a moment. Assume a population of 8000 and an average of four persons per family, and you need 2000 new homes for the community. We'll assume that these homes are cheaper than the median US home - say, $250,000 apiece on average. That gives you a startup cost of $500 million. Add to that the cost of community infrastructure - everything from water and electricity to a school, a library, and the like - not to mention the farmland surrounding the village, and you've roughly doubled your price tag to $1 billion.
Even if half your residents own their own homes now and can pay for their new housing out of their equity - not a likely situation in the midst of today's housing crash and credit crunch - and all the residents put in a great deal of sweat equity in the form of unpaid labor building the village, it's still going to cost a great deal. If you had 2000 families committed enough to the project to risk their financial future on it, it might nonetheless be possible to make it happen. Still, that's a huge risk, and it's made even larger by the fact that the new village is going to have to provide jobs for all its adult residents - part of the point of the exercise is that nobody owns a car, remember, so commuting to the nearest city is out.
Nor can the village's inhabitants count on being magically transported to a deindustrial world, where they can simply harvest their edible forest crops and barter skills among themselves. For many years to come, they will have bills to pay - not least the costs incurred in setting up the village - and national, state, and local taxes as well. Will the new village be able to provide its residents jobs that will insure their financial survival? Many small towns in the same population range are failing to do that right now. Behind the attractive image of a self-sufficient village in the countryside, in other words, lies the hard reality of a $1 billion gamble for survival against serious economic odds.
That $1 billion gamble, furthermore, would at best only take 8000 people out of the automobile economy - few enough that statistical noise will cover any impact they might have on the larger picture. Imagine a program to take ten percent of the US population out of the automobile economy instead; that's the sort of scale such a program would need in order to have any measurable effect on the fate of industrial society. The price tag there would be around $3.8 trillion in direct costs, plus the huge indirect costs involved in abandoning or relocating ten percent of the country's existing housing stock, residential and community infrastructure, and so on. It would take years, and possibly generations, for the savings in petroleum costs to make up for the huge initial outlay, and if the program turned out not to work - if, for whatever reason, the world on the far side of Hubbert's peak turned out not to be suited to villages of the sort my correspondent envisions - all that outlay would have been wasted.
Now my correspondent's plan is far from the most extreme example of this kind of unadaptive thinking. The poster children here are the dwindling tribe of technology fans who believe that fusion power will save us if we only commit enough money to research. It's been well over half a century since the first attempts to make a viable fusion reactor got under way, and the only working example in the solar system is still 93,000,000 miles away from Earth, rising in the eastern skies every morning as it turns hydrogen into helium at its own unhurried pace. We have absolutely no certainty that another trillion dollars of investment will get us any closer to commercially viable fusion power, and if the gamble fails, industrial society is left twisting in the wind with a great deal of empty space beneath its feet.
The problem shared by these, and so many other proposed responses to the predicament of industrial society, is that they aren't adaptive in the second, dictionary sense. They bet the farm on a single strategy, and if that fails, there is no plan B. Such plans look good on paper, but that's usually as far as they go, because the factors in the human and natural environment that would make them possible simply aren't there. For some forty years now, for instance, people have been talking about village communities like the ones my correspondent described. Very few have even been started, fewer have been built, and the ones that have become viable communities can be counted on the fingers of one foot.
What sort of response to the emerging crisis of the industrial world would count as adaptive? We'll be talking about that for quite a number of posts to come, but a few suggestions might be worth making at this point.
First, an adaptive response is scalable - that is, it can be started and tested on a very small scale, with a minimal investment of resources, and then expanded from there if it proves to work. A fusion reactor is not scalable; you either have one, after trillions of dollars of further investment, or you don't. My correspondent's village proposal is a good deal more scalable than this, but even so it's impossible to give it a try without at least a few hundred families and quite a bit of money. What we need, by contrast, are responses that can start out with individuals committing only the money, resources and time they can easily spare.
Second, an adaptive response is modular - that is, it can be broken down into distinct elements, each of which functions on its own without needing the involvement of all the other parts. That allows something that doesn't work well to be swapped out without disrupting the rest of the system; it also allows elements suited to one stage of the deindustrializing process to be replaced with something else when that stage gives way to another. Think of the difference between a machine and a toolkit. A machine either does the job or it doesn't, and if the job changes, you usually have to replace the entire tool. If you have a toolkit, by contrast, the jobs that can't be done with one tool can usually be done with another.
Third, an adaptive response is open - that is, it can be combined freely with other approaches to the challenges of the future and the enduring predicaments of human existence. None of us can know in advance what belief systems, socioeconomic arrangements, and lifestyle choices will turn out to be most adaptive at each stage of the decline of industrial society. Locking a response into one particular set of approaches limits its usefulness, and could lead people in the future to jettison valuable options because they have become too thoroughly entangled with a dysfunctional economic system or a discredited ideology.
These characteristics look back toward some of the issues already discussed in this blog, but they also open unfamiliar doors. As we peer through those doors in the weeks and months to come, it might be possible to glimpse something of what adaptive responses to the predicament of the industrial world might look like.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2007/11/adaptive-responses-to-peak-oil.html
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
posted by Bill Totten at
8:07 PM
2 Comments:
Here's the current news and links on Terra Preta (TP)soils and closed-loop pyrolysis of Biomass would interest you and the Druids;
Terra Preta Soils Technology To Master the Carbon Cycle
This technology represents the most comprehensive, low cost, and productive approach to long term stewardship and sustainability.Terra Preta Soils a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, 1/3 Lower CH4 & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Thanks,
Erich
SCIAM Article May 15 07;
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=5670236C-E7F2-99DF-3E2163B9FB144E40
After many years of reviewing solutions to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) I believe this technology can manage Carbon for the greatest collective benefit at the lowest economic price, on vast scales. It just needs to be seen by ethical globally minded companies.
Could you please consider looking for a champion for this orphaned Terra Preta Carbon Soil Technology.
The main hurtle now is to change the current perspective held by the IPCC that the soil carbon cycle is a wash, to one in which soil can be used as a massive and ubiquitous Carbon sink via Charcoal. Below are the first concrete steps in that direction;
S.1884 – The Salazar Harvesting Energy Act of 2007
A Summary of Biochar Provisions in S.1884:
Carbon-Negative Biomass Energy and Soil Quality Initiative
for the 2007 Farm Bill
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html
(...PLEASE!!..........Contact your Senators & Repps in Support of S.1884........NOW!!...)
Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.
Potential Carbon Emissions Reductions from Biomass by 2030by Ralph P. Overend, Ph.D. and Anelia Milbrandt
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
http://www.ases.org/climatechange/toc/07_biomass.pdf
The organization 25x25 (see 25x'25 - Home) released it's (first-ever, 55-page )"Action Plan" ; see; http://www.25x25.org/storage/25x25/documents/IP%20Documents/ActionPlanFinalWEB_04-19-07.pdf
On page 29 , as one of four foci for recommended RD&D, the plan lists: "The development of biochar, animal agriculture residues and other non-fossil fuel based fertilizers, toward the end of integrating energy production with enhanced soil quality and carbon sequestration."
and on p 32, recommended as part of an expanded database aspect of infrastructure: "Information on the application of carbon as fertilizer and existing carbon credit trading systems."
I feel 25x25 is now the premier US advocacy organization for all forms of renewable energy, but way out in front on biomass topics.
There are 24 billion tons of carbon controlled by man in his agriculture and waste stream, all that farm & cellulose waste which is now dumped to rot or digested or combusted and ultimately returned to the atmosphere as GHG should be returned to the Soil.
Even with all the big corporations coming to the GHG negotiation table, like Exxon, Alcoa, .etc, we still need to keep watch as they try to influence how carbon management is legislated in the USA. Carbon must have a fair price, that fair price and the changes in the view of how the soil carbon cycle now can be used as a massive sink verses it now being viewed as a wash, will be of particular value to farmers and a global cool breath of fresh air for us all.
If you have any other questions please feel free to call me or visit the TP web site I've been drafted to co-administer. http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
It has been immensely gratifying to see all the major players join the mail list , Cornell folks, T. Beer of Kings Ford Charcoal (Clorox), Novozyne the M-Roots guys(fungus), chemical engineers, Dr. Danny Day of EPRIDA , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who's back round I don't know have joined.
Also Here is the Latest BIG Terra Preta Soil news;
The Honolulu Advertiser: “The nation's leading manufacturer of charcoal has licensed a University of Hawai'i process for turning green waste into barbecue briquets.”
See: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007707280348
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State 04/10/07
Glomalin, the recently discovered soil protien, may be the secret to to TP soils productivity;
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2003/030205.htm
Here is my current Terra Preta posting which condenses the most important stories and links;
Terra Preta Soils Technology To Master the Carbon Cycle
Man has been controlling the carbon cycle , and there for the weather, since the invention of agriculture, all be it was as unintentional, as our current airliner contrails are in affecting global dimming. This unintentional warm stability in climate has over 10,000 years, allowed us to develop to the point that now we know what we did,............ and that now......... we are over doing it.
The prehistoric and historic records gives a logical thrust for soil carbon sequestration.
I wonder what the soil biome carbon concentration was REALLY like before the cutting and burning of the world's forest, my guess is that now we see a severely diminished community, and that only very recent Ag practices like no-till and reforestation have started to help rebuild it. It makes implementing Terra Preta soil technology like an act of penitence, a returning of the misplaced carbon to where it belongs.
On the Scale of CO2 remediation:
It is my understanding that atmospheric CO2 stands at 379 PPM, to stabilize the climate we need to reduce it to 350 PPM by the removal of 230 Billion tons of carbon.
The best estimates I've found are that the total loss of forest and soil carbon (combined
pre-industrial and industrial) has been about 200-240 billion tons. Of
that, the soils are estimated to account for about 1/3, and the vegetation
the other 2/3.
Since man controls 24 billion tons in his agriculture then it seems we have plenty to work with in sequestering our fossil fuel CO2 emissions as stable charcoal in the soil.
As Dr. Lehmann at Cornell points out, "Closed-Loop Pyrolysis systems such as Dr. Danny Day's are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative". and that " a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions! "
Terra Preta Soils Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, 1/3 Lower CH4 & N2O soil emissions, and 3X FertilityToo
This some what orphaned new soil technology speaks to so many different interests and disciplines that it has not been embraced fully by any. I'm sure you will see both the potential of this system and the convergence needed for it's implementation.
The integrated energy strategy offered by Charcoal based Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.
The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade or a Carbon tax in place.
.Nature article, Aug 06: Putting the carbon back Black is the new green:
http://bestenergies.com/downloads/naturemag_200604.pdf
Here's the Cornell page for an over view:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/biochar/Biochar_home.htm
University of Beyreuth TP Program, Germany http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=taxonomy/term/118
This Earth Science Forum thread on these soils contains further links, and has been viewed by 19,000 self-selected folks. ( I post everything I find on Amazon Dark Soils, ADS here):
http://forums.hypography.com/earth-science/3451-terra-preta.html
There is an ecology going on in these soils that is not completely understood, and if replicated and applied at scale would have multiple benefits for farmers and environmentalist.
Terra Preta creates a terrestrial carbon reef at a microscopic level. These nanoscale structures provide safe haven to the microbes and fungus that facilitate fertile soil creation, while sequestering carbon for many hundred if not thousands of years. The combination of these two forms of sequestration would also increase the growth rate and natural sequestration effort of growing plants.
The reason TP has elicited such interest on the Agricultural/horticultural side of it's benefits is this one static:
One gram of charcoal cooked to 650 C Has a surface area of 400 m2 (for soil microbes & fungus to live on), now for conversion fun:
One ton of charcoal has a surface area of 400,000 Acres!! which is equal to 625 square miles!! Rockingham Co. VA. , where I live, is only 851 Sq. miles
Now at a middle of the road application rate of 2 lbs/sq ft (which equals 1000 sqft/ton) or 43 tons/acre yields 26,000 Sq miles of surface area per Acre. VA is 39,594 Sq miles.
What this suggest to me is a potential of sequestering virgin forest amounts of carbon just in the soil alone, without counting the forest on top.
To take just one fairly representative example, in the classic Rothampstead experiments in England where arable land was allowed to revert to deciduous temperate woodland, soil organic carbon increased 300-400% from around 20 t/ha to 60-80 t/ha (or about 20-40 tons per acre) in less than a century (Jenkinson & Rayner 1977). The rapidity with which organic carbon can build up in soils is also indicated by examples of buried steppe soils formed during short-lived interstadial phases in Russia and Ukraine. Even though such warm, relatively moist phases usually lasted only a few hundred years, and started out from the skeletal loess desert/semi-desert soils of glacial conditions (with which they are inter-leaved), these buried steppe soils have all the rich organic content of a present-day chernozem soil that has had many thousands of years to build up its carbon (E. Zelikson, Russian Academy of Sciences, pers. comm., May 1994). http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/carbon1.html
All the Bio-Char Companies and equipment manufactures I've found:
Carbon Diversion
http://www.carbondiversion.com/
Eprida: Sustainable Solutions for Global Concerns
http://www.eprida.com/home/index.php4
BEST Pyrolysis, Inc. | Slow Pyrolysis - Biomass - Clean Energy - Renewable Ene
http://www.bestenergies.com/companies/bestpyrolysis.html
Dynamotive Energy Systems | The Evolution of Energy
http://www.dynamotive.com/
Ensyn - Environmentally Friendly Energy and Chemicals
http://www.ensyn.com/who/ensyn.htm
Agri-Therm, developing bio oils from agricultural waste
http://www.agri-therm.com/
Advanced BioRefinery Inc.
http://www.advbiorefineryinc.ca/
Technology Review: Turning Slash into Cash
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17298/
3R Environmental Technologies Ltd. (Edward Someus)
WEB: http://www.terrenum.net/
The company has Swedish origin and developing/designing medium and large scale carbonization units. The company is the licensor and technology provider to NviroClean Tech Ltd British American organization WEB: http://www.nvirocleantech.com and VERTUS Ltd.
http://www.vertustechnologies.com
The International Agrichar Initiative (IAI) conference held at Terrigal, NSW, Australia in 2007. ( http://iaiconference.org/home.html ) ( The papers from this conference are now being posted at their home page)
.
If pre-Columbian Kayopo Indians could produce these soils up to 6 feet deep over 15% of the Amazon basin using "Slash & CHAR" verses "Slash & Burn", it seems that our energy and agricultural industries could also product them at scale.
Harnessing the work of this vast number of microbes and fungi changes the whole equation of energy return over energy input (EROEI) for food and Bio fuels. I see this as the only sustainable agricultural strategy if we no longer have cheap fossil fuels for fertilizer.
We need this super community of wee beasties to work in concert with us by populating them into their proper Soil horizon Carbon Condos.
Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
1047 Dave Berry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA. 22840
(540) 289-9750
shengar@aol.com
By
Anonymous, at 10:17 AM, November 28, 2007
If you invest in a dead end no amount of money will make it work. We took a wrong turn with fusion. However, we may be turning in a better direction:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
It has been funded:
Bussard Reactor Funded
The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron 11 which does not.
The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.
If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame. A much better investment than the CO2 sequestration.
BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.
The Japanese and Australians also have programs.
By
M. Simon, at 2:45 AM, November 30, 2007
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