Jim:

I wish I could tell you how many times I have heard "That sounds too
good to be true". However, many social and environmental issues could
be solved if more of us all work together. The integrated
collaboration of different species demonstrates nature's way to
improve systems efficiency. However businesses and people in general
(I am a prime example) want to go at it alone, no matter how
inefficient we are. This spirit of independence is the hallmark of
the America in which I grew up. The can do (at all costs) attitude
may contribute to why are one of the highest per capita users of
energy in the world and the US economy and society see cheap energy as
essential. It is not. The creative spark of imagination and out the
box thinking can offer many ways to solve problems as we bring
unlikely partners together.

As one of seven finalists for sponsored demonstration for carbon
sequestration by a large industrial manufacturing consortium, I made
the point that at my final presentation was that this solution is not
a stand-alone solution. It is a solution born of cooperation. You will
see it as different businesses from energy, electricity, fertilizer,
farming, chemicals, and soil science to educational, governmental and
research all working together to adapt processes to benefit each
other. Can you imagine a fictional conversation of General Motors
saying to Dow, we need you to adjust the material composition of our
dash board plastic because the fish growers coop utilizing a
co-product stream from a supplier to the Cargill-Dow polylactic acid
plant can double production if we make a small shift in process
techniques. Yet, in my opinion, the more we do this, we will begin to
find opportunities in the world for answers to our most difficult
problems.

In William H. Calvin book, A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution
and Abrupt Climate Change,
(http://www.williamcalvin.com/BrainForAllSeasons/index.htm) he makes
the argument for the evolution of humankind's increased brain and a
nervous system that allowed the species to survive past climatic
changes through cooperation. Those that did not ...died. If the new
artificial species of corporations are to survive, they too will need
to learn this lesson on a global as well as local level. However, I
offer that we may learn an important lesson from nature's competitive
collaboration.

Environmental difficulties are the initial drivers for the unlikely
alliances. Yet, as the successes grow, our new nervous system of
instant global communication of ideas, could alter the evolutionary
rate of both humankind and our artificial constructs. We have made
Eprida a social purpose enterprise that creates monetary value in
relation to its success at serving the global commons, for the benefit
of life and the constructs created to add value and recapture a
return. I make this point to simply offer a perspective (mine). If
it serves by enhancing the quality of life for those who are working
within our evolving business structure, that would be great. If it
allows us to see our current corporate structure as moving into a new
era of highly fluid, flexible and adaptable business relationships,
excellent. The ability to see our answers coming from new
relationships helps to unconsciously see "them as us". Not a bad
place to start from, or to end up.

So the net about this silver bullet is that it may be a silver rope,
which we can reach out and lend a hand. This is just one of millions
of new cords which can help pull humanity together. This is just my
perspective, but I hope it helps explain the approach.

Here are a few links to information on terra preta and the people who
understand carbon & charcoal in the soil. I have a 3 inch stack of
research and publications from Japan, but unfortunately they are
primarily in Japanese.
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann.html
http://www.ars.usda.gov/pandp/people/people.htm?personid=4645&showpubs=true
http://www.siue.edu/GEOGRAPHY/woods.html
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecerickso/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/eldorado.shtml
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200203/mann
http://www.newfarm.org/news/0403/041803/drdon_soil_p3.shtml
Discover Magazine Aug 9 2002 pp920-922
http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/ic/anth307/papers/Real_Dirt.pdf (class
material for a course at U. Az)
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/showsmore.php?t=20030304
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/showsmore.php?t=20030303
http://www.geo.uni-bayreuth.de/bodenkunde/terra_preta/index.html
http://www.museu-goeldi.br/pesquisa/ecologia/tpa/paginas_imagens/tpaindex.htm
http://www.computare.org/Support%20documents/Commentary/Chacoal%20Sink%2004_05.h\
tm
http://www.ldd.go.th/Wcss2002/Abstracts/1935.pdf
(a pre-print of an article scheduled for publication in an upcoming
special edition of the Journal Energy is also available, just drop me
an email at danny.day at eprida.com, a social purpose enterprise)

Excellent books are:
Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time
by Bruno Glaser, Wiliam I. Woods
# Hardcover: 216 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 9.25 x 0.75 x 6.00
# Publisher: Springer Verlag; (July 1, 2004)
# ISBN: 3540007547
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/3540007547/qid=1091543222/sr=8-1/r\
ef=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0334502-2347329?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management
by Johannes Lehmann, Dirse C. Kern, Bruno Glaser, William I. Woods
# Hardcover: 523 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.05 x 9.74 x 6.60
# Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers; (January 1, 2004)
# ISBN: 1402018398
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1402018398/qid=1091543222/sr=8-2/r\
ef=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-0334502-2347329?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Please feel free to email questions or post and I will do my best to
get you the answers. The EACU symposium proceedings are free($4 S&H
US)for non-profits and press. The techical proceedings of the
conference were video taped and are on the attendees CD. For-profits
please check the Eprida website for availability ($).

If you would like any specific presentation from the conference for
personal use or educational use, please let me know and I will send it
to you.

Danny Day


--- In energyresources@yahoogroups.com, Jim Allen <vineyfig@m...> wrote:
> This is extremely interesting -- but sounds too good to be true. I'm
> checking with ag soil and biomass experts I know -- who else knows
> about "negative carbon," "terra preta" soils, etc? -- Jim Allen,
> Alabama
> On Aug 1, 2004, at 1:11 PM, danday wrote:
>
> > A recent symposium (EACU) at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA,
> > USA brought together a group representing scientists from chemistry,
> > archeology, physics, anthropology, microbiology, soil scientists,
> > agronomists, renewable energy research, and representatives from DOE,
> > USDA and industry. The focus was to look at the evidence for massive
> > historical carbon utilization, current research and how carbon
> > negative energy could be economically deployed today.
> > (http://www.georgiaitp.org/carbon)
> >
> > The ability to consider agricultural carbon applications arises from
> > the fact that up to one half of the carbon in our cropland soils has
> > been lost due to intensive agriculture and human induced degradation.
> >
> > The initial phase of the meetings started with a review of the current
> > knowledge of man made soils called terra preta occupying an area of
> > the Amazon that total to twice the size of Britain. Carbon was added
> > to these soils in the form of a low temperature charcoal. Using low
> > intensity smoldering fires created these charcoals. By analysis, we
> > can tell that they were created 1000-2000 years ago and were part of a
> > soil management practice designed to take a yellow clay soil of
> > limited biological productivity and convert it into some of the
> > richest soil in the world. A thousand years after its creation it is
> > so well known in Brazil, that it is dug up and sold as potting soil.
> >
> > Dr. Ogawa, from Kansai Environmental in Japan, a division of Kansai
> > Power the 2nd largest electric producer in that country, presented
> > their research on charcoal addition to the soil. Their work, which has
> > been ongoing for more than 15 years, has been studying the causes of
> > the charcoal effect and led to thee Japanese government approving
> > charcoal as an official land management practice. The impact of many
> > studies in Brazil to Thailand to Japan, showing increased crop yields
> > of 20-50% and total biomass yields increasing as much 280%, led Kansai
> > Electric to fund a reforestation research plantation in Australia
> > with Dr. Syd Shea for producing charcoal and returning it to grow more
> > trees and crops in the arid west of that country.
> >
> > Low temperature woody charcoal (not grass or high cellulose) has an
> > interior layer of bio-oil condensates that microbes consume and is
> > equal to glucose in its effect on microbial growth (Christoph Steiner,
> > EACU 2004). High temp char loses this layer and does not promote soil
> > fertility very well. Tests by Finnish researcher Janna Pitkien, on
> > highly porous materials like zeolite, activated carbon and charcoal
> > show that microbial growth is substantially improved with charcoal
> > (opposite to her expectations). Evidence of terra preta's ability to
> > grow and sequester more carbon was undercovered by soil scientist
> > William Woods (U.Illinois). The work is still under investigation in
> > Brazil by over the last 20 years mining terra preta for potting soil
> > has not decreased its availability. Farmers have learned it recovers a
> > centimeter per year. The possibility those small fractions of char
> > continually migrate down, providing housing for microbes as they
> > process surface-cover biomass. The microbes and fungi live and die
> > inside the porous media increasing its carbon content. What are the
> > limits, we do not know but work at Cornell under the guidance of
> > Johannes Lehman and W. Zech, Bruno Glaser at the University of
> > Bayreuth (Germany) and Emprapa (Manus, Brazil) are investigating these
> > phenomena.
> >
> > What we know now is that the properly prepared charcoal can increase
> > crop yields and sequester carbon for thousands of years (5000 years is
> > an estimate by Dan Gavin, charcoal dating researcher.(U. of Ill). Its
> > properties can allow even more carbon to be sequestered with more
> > biomass growth and soil carbon from microbial-fungi proliferation.
> >
> > The economics of this type of carbon utilization can be very simply
> > viewed as the use between carbon-oxygen conversion for energy (ie
> > burning) or its use as a soil amendment. Our estimates using coal as
> > a comparison, at $1.50/MBTU, showed that at 1000lbs/acre with direct
> > injection would be alternately using 10MBTU of carbon in a sequestered
> > form or $15/acre even at double these rates a small increase in crop
> > yields and decreased fertilizer use produce a positive economic gain
> > for the farm and for future generations are topsoils are restored.
> > Add carbon credits and positive environmental impacts and the rewards
> > justify what a few of us are calling a global Manhattan project of
> > climate change.
> >
> > But this is just half the story. In 2002 we demonstrated the
> > production of this charcoal from 50kg/hr of biomass while
> > simultaneously producing hydrogen in pilot scale equipment
> > (http://www.eprida.com ) One of the largest uses of hydrogen today is
> > for food production via its conversion to ammonia. A demonstration in
> > October 2002 for the use of this charcoal to create a scrubbing system
> > exhaust for CO2, (&, SOx, NOx) (Patent US AP#20040111968 ) while
> > producing a nitrogen fertilizer provides a technique for producing a
> > off gas stream of hydrogen and CO which can be processed into
> > hydrogen, ammonia and diesel. The efficiency of this system is
> > enhanced by the combination of exothermic and endothermic processes.
> > The conversion of 40% of the hydrogen to ammonia for creating a
> > sequestering carbon value added product leaves a 2.7 moles of H2 to 1
> > of CO meeting the requirements for a Fischer-Tropsch biomass
> > conversion process to produce a carbon negative diesel. The resulting
> > carbon sequestration off sets the CO2 produced from the diesel by more
> > than two to one.
> >
> > If additional biomass or microbial biomass growth is added, and/or the
> > replacement of some non-renewable streams, the impact is substantial.
> >
> > The questions arise as to the availability of biomass and the areas
> > for usage of this type of soil amendment/fertilizer. On available
> > biomass, (there is a good diagram of this prepared by Michael
> > Obersteiner of the International Institute for Advanced Systems
> > Analysis, Austria) found in the July 7th DC luncheon presentation.
> > "Cutting-Edge Biomass Technologies For Mitigating Acute Climate Change
> > " http://www.eprida.com/hydro/ecoss/presentations/symposiums.htm
> >
> > The net is that using current biomass production (in the future we
> > will have much more as we restore our worlds topsoil with essential
> > carbon) we have the capability to go carbon negative today. As we make
> > the switch, it will need to be a global effort as positive feedbacks
> > are kicking in and will likely accelerate.
> >
> > What about areas for use? Considering the 6.1 gigatons of CO2
> > accumulation, we would need to utilize this land and biomass
> > production technique on only 10% of the total of biologically
> > productive and human degraded lands per year to attain carbon negative
> > status. If we added desert lands for reclamation the number declines
> > further. Is is a big number, yes, but it is doable and a culture from
> > 2000 years ago clearly understood its value then. Considering that
> > the majority of new emissions will come from developing countries,
> > what ever we choose, needs to be simple and profitable.
> >
> > What can you do? Read up on terra preat (some of the published works
> > made a part of the above patent application), look at references in
> > the Eprida website or convince yourself by testing. Grow your favorite
> > plant in two pots, one with 1/3 wood charcoal (soak this in fertilizer
> > for several days), 1/3 sand and 1/3 available soil. Plant the other
> > with your normal method for potting plants. Fertilize and watch them
> > grow. Watch it for three seasons and note the differences. (Many have
> > noted their best results in the second year as microbial populations
> > increase) Alternately, use a microbe/fungi inoculation to speed the
> > response.
> >
> > Then tell everyone you know. Even if we can't stop avoid the climate
> > shift we will begun to build an awareness of a solution. If we broaden
> > the understanding that we can produce carbon negative fuels, scrub
> > fossil fuel exhaust of pollutants and C02, reverse the effect of our
> > mining the soil, depleting soil carbon, trace minerals and losing
> > agricultural productivity then we will effect many generations to
> > come. In our lifetime, a 2000-year-old secret is being reborn and its
> > timeliness could never have been more appropriate. It now up to this
> > generation to embrace a plan to work with nature to restore lost soil
> > carbon and rebuild the incredible life at work in our soils. Working
> > together, we can achieve the possible.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your message didn't show up on the list? Complaints or compliments?
> > Drop me (Tom Robertson) a note at t1r@b...
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >