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Today's Top News
Phase Out Coal and Burn Trees Instead, Urges Leading Scientist
Current targets on emissions are 'a recipe for global disaster, not salvation'
Humanity must urgently embark on a massive programme to power civilisation from wood to stave off catastrophic climate change, one of the world's top scientists has told The Independent on Sunday.
Twenty years ago, Professor James Hansen was the first leading scientist to announce that global warming was taking place. Now he has issued a warning that a back-to-the-future return to one of the oldest fuels is imperative because the world has exceeded the danger level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Growing trees, which absorb the gas from the air as they grow, burning them instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity, and capturing and storing the carbon produced in the process is needed to get the greenhouse effect down to safe levels, he says.
Professor Hansen's assertion that there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will alarm governments and environmentalists, who are concentrating on the already daunting task of limiting its build-up, while allowing it to rise well above present levels. However, his views will command respect because, as director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies for the past 27 years, he has been one of the few climate scientists ready to risk his reputation by openly stating what many suspect to be true.
In 1988 Professor Hansen put global warming on the political agenda by telling the US Congress that he was "99 per cent certain" that human activities were warming up the planet. It took the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change until last year to catch up, by which time nearly two vital decades had been lost.
In the UK last week, his evidence helped to secure the acquittal of six Greenpeace activists charged with causing criminal damage to the Kingsnorth power station in Kent.
The level of carbon dioxide stands at 385 parts per million (ppm), about 100ppm above what it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It is rising by about 2ppm a year. The most ambitious international efforts focus on stabilising it at 450 ppm, though few see this as achievable.
But Professor Hansen says this goal "is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation" and that present levels have already "brought us to the precipice of a planetary tipping point". He adds: "If we go over the edge we will transition to an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return within any foreseeable future generation."
He is convinced that 350 ppm is the absolute maximum that will avoid the loss of the polar ice sheets and other disasters. He says that all coal power stations must be phased out by 2030, unless they are equipped with special "carbon capture and storage" equipment that stops the gas escaping into the atmosphere. If that was done, the level could be stabilised at 400 ppm. After that, a vigorous programme of planting trees to suck up carbon dioxide - coupled with the use of carbon capture equipment when the trees are burnt, and improvements in agricultural practices - could get levels down to 350 ppm "within a century".
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52 Comments so far
Show AllI wish that the article had deveoted more verbiage to the specifics to the concept of using trees (and, I presume, other woody plants) as a renewable energy resource.
I think that it is entirely feasible. We would certainly have to put our best intelligence into the process of growing and selecting fuel materials (no cutting down the redwoods). Increasing the use of the most efficient burning technologies would also extend this resource.
Those of us who live in the southeastern US know how fast certain species of pine tree grow and we have lots of space to grow more. This idea needs more attention.
q
The thing that concerns me about "carbon capture" is --where? Where are we going to store it?
This would be even more important concerning radioactive waste.
I hope someone has anserws. If trres are capturing Co2 and we keep cutting them down, how would that work?
The burning of plant material is carbon neutral, as long as you replace the plants that you burn. The carbon that is released during burning is taken up by the new plants, and so the cycle continues without any net carbon gain. The burning of fossil fuel transfers sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, so there is a net atmospheric carbon gain. If the entire burning of fossil fuels were to be replaced by wood tomorrow, there would be no further rise in atmospheric CO2.
The burning of plant material is carbon neutral, as long as you replace the plants that you burn. The carbon that is released during burning is taken up by the new plants, and so the cycle continues without any net carbon gain. The burning of fossil fuel transfers sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, so there is a net atmospheric carbon gain. If the entire burning of fossil fuels were to be replaced by wood tomorrow, there would be no further rise in atmospheric CO2.
Thanks for the links and the replies. I heard something about bamboo--it that silly?
Bamboo grows quick as hell, so I would imagine it could be useful. But...I think I read somewhere a few years ago that something like 97% of the forests and woodlands that once covered America have been cut down in the past few hundred years. I sincerely doubt there is enough wood to burn for energy.
Burning plant material cannot be carbon neutral if you only replace what you burn.
The reason is that harvesting, treating and transportation to where it is to be used as fuel requires energy sources which are not carbon neutral -- machines or animal labor.
__________
There's a glory in the morning because the earth turns 'round and a promise in the evening when the sun goes down
If you produce electricity from plant material plus wind, solar, tidal, wave etc. and use the electricity to run vehicles, it will be carbon neutral, if you replace these sources with new living material. I know that battery technology at the moment is expensive, but the great thing about our new technological advances is that it follows the developments of computing, mobile phones etc. and therefore cars running on electricity will and are coming down in prices relatively quickly and will continue to do so after the first major push and change of paradigm.
For the people who are discussing the use of hemp, the great thing about it is that it can be grown on poor ground where food resources will not normally grow, it can be grown along all of the highways for instance, everywhere grass grows, and the stuff grows fast, it is a hardy plant. Hemp can also not be smoked for entertainment, though I would still not be against it if it could be.
As an aside, I would much rather be around someone who smokes for fun than someone who drinks for fun, due to the philosophical stimulation it provides, albeit usually of lower quality than that of true thinkers, it is still funny, though I don't touch the stuff myself, anymore (another great reason to legalize marijuana, people usually mature out of toking but it is the opposite for drinking). My theory on why toking is illegal is because it causes people to think about who they are on the earth and thereafter question authority to the horror of the illegitimate powerholders, whereas excessive drinking turns people into a slobbering unthinking mess.
With all of this said, I do not think legalization of Marijuana should be high on the Progressive agenda since it is never a benefit to society to encourage things people already do with or without permission of the law. At the end of the day, people will realize as they did after abolition, that an unenforceable law is a stupid one, and so we need not push this cause, it will carry itself as naturally as freely sharing music and films.
What about soil depletion? Ordinarily that carbon contributes to soil health when it all ends up on the forest floor. What happens when you constantly remove it for burning?
Also, plant cellulose such as wood is on a different order than the more concentrated fossil fuels. The applications will be limited.
This is actually feasible. The article should have spoken specifics.
I just did a big series of articles on phytotechnology, and carbon sequestration is one issue, as well as harvesting biomass for energy.
I am sure there are still problems associate with, but at the very least burning trees you grow would not create additional carbon outputs.
But basically, the idea is you grow a fast growing woody plant... poplars are one choice. The trees absorb carbon and sequester it. Then you harvest parts of the plants for fuel. Sure, some will be released when they are harvested.. but not as much, and I assume there'd be specifics procedures to reduce pollution in the burning process. Trees and plants can also be used to clean up pollutants from the soil and water.
This phytotechnology stuff is going to become huge...
One good resources is from this company called Ecolotree. They specifically focus on phytoremediation, but he mentions carbon sequestration as well...
http://www.ecolotree.com/pdf/5.0504_linkingopportunities.pdf
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
First, to do this properly you don't burn the whole tree; look up 'coppicing' here on Wiki. The idea is a tree is encouraged to send up multiple trunks from a single root mass and only a portion, say 1 part in 7, is cut every year. The forest remains intact, retains much of the biodiversity and the root mass stays in the ground rather than decaying to atmospheric gases.
Secondly you don't acutally burn all of what you get. Using a process of pyrolysis liquid fuel can be extracted from woody biomass along with methane and the majority of the carbon in the tree is returned to the soil as carbon sequestration and permanent soil amendment. This process is called biochar or terra preta. The biochar process may be humanities only hope of removing excess carbon from the atmosphere and reaching as sustainable agricultural base at the same time.
Details count.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
I hear hemp can be used in place of trees and doesn't contribute to global warming. Wasn't that the case before?
I think that that is true--but where would we grow it all? Did using corn, etc. for biofuels really contribute to high food prices, or was that the apologists' for hte oil industries BS?
If this resulted in food shortage, would using hemp result in an increase in the price of marijuana? Cause I think we're all going to need some in the coming years.
We'll get our usual Neros chirping in about how even if the Earth is warming man's carbon-burning has nothing to do with it, so why change. Just a natural process that happens every few million years, coincidentally just before a big species die-off.
We could have had all coal plants in the US equipped with the carbon capture systems had Reagan not ignored the problems of pollution rather than rewarding polluters and not holding their feet to the fire that is killing our world.
I'm not sure burning trees is the answer. Ever been to Iceland? They burned their last tree a thousand years ago and they just aren't coming back.
The trees grew there when it warm, like in the MWP 1000 years ago. It was warmer then than in the 20th century. Man burned trees for fire. Perhaps the MWP was Global Warming caused by man. LOL.
A major problem is we don't have a century to get the PPm down to 350 or lower.
At the level of Co2 in our atmosphere now we have global warming of such that the Arctic ice is melting and every year it wil become worse in that area of the globe. That is the most important issue humanity faces, or has ever faced.
If doctor Atcheson is correct with this artlcle I will be so bold as to post once again, and I do believbe he is 100% correct, we have very little time left to take action and that means massive action world wide. This is not an American problem, it's a world wide problem.
This article takes about three minutes to absorb, it's factual, it's already occurring and we have ot stop it or we lose. All of us. If anyone konws of a more important issue, one which could result in the end of almost all life on Earth and something we could control with world wide cooperation without going to war, please do let us know of it.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
~Kem Patrick~
the problem is we doon't have a century ;to get the PPM down ot 350 or lower.
hey kem, i've been thinking and doing a little research. because i got to wondering if the methane locked up there in the arctic would be the same as the methane in a septic tank/cesspool.? and i've come to the conclusion (all by myself) that it would be.
when you think about it, all that methane locked up there for thousands of years is the same shit that comes out of a septic tank that might have been built in your back yard a year ago. the only difference being, there's lots more in the arctic and the tundra.
so have a look at this link and tell me, if, when the methane is released, we are going to die from explosion, (cos some stupid polar bear strikes a match) by asphyxiation, or from choking on our own vomit because of the horrendous smell?
http://www.inspect-ny.com/septic/SepticMethane.htm
I believe that it allready too late; we have passed the point of no return. I also believe the things we must do, such as ending our addiction to fossil fuels, simplifying our lives, ending all this nonsense about off-shore drilling, ENDING FACTORY FARMING which pollutes MORE than cars do, making a major GREEN SHIFT is certainly possible, but how can we do this without the political will and a stop to corporate greed? We can't even end the corporate bribes of politicians to get our government back. Our species will go extinct due to overpopulation, use of non-renewable resources, and lifestyles that are not sustainable.
In reality our species will come close to extinction due nuclear warfare, robot attack jets, rail guns, laser weapons and space dominance. BUT! we won't be completely extincted and hopefully those that survive will have learned the hard lesson. Though it's as likely the survivors will be the grossly corrupt and vastly murderous and will spawn a race of simpleton drones to do their bidding.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
"Though it's as likely the survivors will be the grossly corrupt and vastly murderous and will spawn a race of simpleton drones to do their bidding."
Oops - too late.
We need to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible, in the U.S., and globally. The national network I direct, GlobalWarmingSolution.org, released its emissions reduction proposal, “Rosie Revisited: A U.S.-Led Solution to Global Warming”, www.globalwarmingsolution.org , in July, 2007. (DVD also available) The report demonstrates the technological and economic feasibility of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2025. In addition, the straightforward methodology we employed for the U.S. energy system could be applied in countries around the world so that these urgently needed emissions reductions are global…as they must be. It is the most aggressive emissions reduction proposal of any U.S. national environmental group. Help us make it happen!
We're sitting on the verge of agricultural catastrophe due Ice Age as we HAVE CERTAINLY passed the tipping point. Reducing green house gasses now will further exacerbate the climate change situation. These 50 degree Massachusetts summer nights would be 30 degrees were the air not so polluted. We would be experiencing permafrost already.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
p.s. professor hansen is a swell bloke.............shame no-one took any notice of him or jacques cousteau.
and you must remember what jacques cousteau said in his book about the earth having 50, 100, maximum 150 years to go before calamity.......i'll give it 50 at most.
What one CRAZY climate scientist...
The "tipping point" is in the past. NOT the future.
We're already into feed back mechanisms that promise to even further quicken the situation, water where there WAS ice, collecting sunlight instead of reflecting it, massive methane release as the tundra thaws... I'm guessing Greenland has less than half a decade before all of it's ice is in the ocean.
The climate is by far cooler now than it was in my youth. The average night temperature in Massachusetts has been 50 degrees over this summer. It was similar last summer. I remember about 20 years ago I would toss and turn all night in the summer to find a spot on my pillow that my face had not warmed. I remember my face swetting to my pillow being a regular summer occurrence.
Not these days. You'll be lucky if a swet shirt is enough to keep you warm at night.
Which all fits with what I've read of the transition between seasonal climate and ice age at this latitude. What I've read says ice age onsets by melting the polar caps which dilute the oceans, slowing the ocean current by reduced salinity/density. The transition occurs across an average 3 years, during which the summers become progressively colder until on the third year the summer never arrives and year round permafrost initiates glacial rise. Hope you got your Wind Turbines, heating elements and green houses ready folks. We're in for a long winter soon.
Use CommonDreams search to find the term "ice age". Then read the article "How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age". It's a real eye opener.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
The weathter over the past couple summers, in the small state of Massacheetts do not indicate a trend. Please check actual data. I don't know waht part of Mass you live, but the the normal average daily summer low temperature in big parts of the state is the mid 50's F.
I'm seeing this a lot - people exclaiming that there have been a lot of cool days this summer and/or cold days last winter, but because warmer than average temperatures have become so prevalent, what people think is cool or cold is just the formerly normal temperature. So, such observations are actualy a verification of warming.
So is the 2000 book "The Coming Global Superstorm" by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber.
What an absolute numnut, this guy ignores wind, wave, tidal, massively unexploited river hydro energy and says the wood steam engine is the wave of the future. What a %*^&*# crackpot.
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
You (and perhaps others) entirely miss his point.
Wind, solar, hydro, etc. only prevent the introduction of new carbon inth the atmosphere. This is not adequate in itself, because Dr. Hansen believes the levels are already too high. So, he is proposing intensive growing of trees and burning the wood, then sequestering the C02 in the ground. This would be the least risky method of actually taking CO2 _out_ of the atmosphere.
That's bullshit, that's coal's hype too- storing carbon in the ground. How about intensive growing of trees to soak up carbon, and building wind, solar, hydro etc so we don't need to burn the trees?
What's more is, the ocean is the largest carbon sink, especially when it's well growing microbiology. Right now the oceans are sick due industrial pollution. This gent seems quite silent as to the depth of solutions available. To state an absolute need of a wood energized economy is ridiculous. With biomass HEMP (aka weed to mean quick growing) is the plant genetics of choice. No land plant grows quicker and is more all around useful. Trees grow SO SLOW. It would be ridiculous to base a biomass economy on trees. That would be like solving oil production decline by genetically engineering dinosaurs so their carcasses would be reduced to oil in wells under the earth, ridiculous!
rocyahsoul@yahoo.com
www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
You want targets? Anyone without the wear-with-all to financially protect themselves (about eighty percent of the world) are already targets.
Return to planet earth, the place where the greedy monkey with the most muscle takes all.
The place where crotch picking athletes make tens of millions, while tens of millions suffer from starvation.
We don't need any more targets. What we need are sharp shooters, to take out the layer of scum that too many of us look up to.
What we do now creates the past, for what is a shadow but present cast.
Lots of revolutions start this way, all shooting and no plan for governance.
If you want your particular revolution to be different, find a way that the guns won't wind up aimed mostly at the relatively innocent. Better yet, find some governance reforms that make the revolution obsolete.
I was speaking metaphorically. You know, the pen is mightier than the sword, kinda stuff. Do unto others....so others don't piss in your punch.
The process Hansen probably has in mind would involve production of charcoal, and then storing the resulting charcoal underground, say in abandoned mine shafts until those are all filled.
No, he is not proposing making charcoal.
He is proposing burning the wood, instead of coal, and using the same (admittedly untried on a large scale) sequestration technology that is proposed for coal. This involves separating the CO2 from the stack gases liquefying it and pumping it into porous formations deep in the ground - typically played out oil/gas reservoirs.
Heating trees, hemp, sweetgrass or any plant material in an enclosed no-oxygen fireplace/furnace creates burnable gases and charcoal. The (relatively low carbon) hydrocarbon gases can be pumped off and burned with air. The remaining charcoal can be buried.
Right now, worldwide but especially in the USA and in China, we are ripping off mountaintops to get at hundreds of mountains of coal. We need to be ripping off zero mountaintops, burning zero mountains of coal, and then on top of this we need to be putting back hundreds of mountains worth of carbon and restoring the soil on top, creating new mountains.
This is in addition to moving to roughly 100% solar/wind/geothermal/water, with either pumped hydroelectric storage or something equivalent (pumped gas in wells) for a several day supply of stored electricity. We need almost all buildings worldwide to supply their own heat and hot water. We need low/zero carbon emission cars -- California had some good electric cars on the road in 1996 but the car companies killed them all dead as soon as the companies got free of California regulations.
To enforce this, we need worldwide tariffs and investment limitations on noncompliant countries.
Finally, we need temporary Arctic and Antarctic cooling measures until we can get carbon levels down.
LOL. Now they want to cut down trees for fuel. Americans have truly become insane.
From a recent WMR report
"In 2004, under pressure from Abramoff and the White House, Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) shepherded the passage of the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which was quickly signed by President George W. Bush. The act settled federal violations of the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 with the Shoshones and compensated them a mere $135 million for 24 million acres of Shoshone land illegally seized by the federal government in Nevada, California, Utah, and Idaho........... Gibbons, who is now governor of Nevada, instantly moved legislation to privatize the former Shoshone lands. Reid, Gibbons, and Senator John Ensign (R-NV), all received lucrative cash contributions to their campaigns from Abramoff clients........
WMR has also learned that the Bush administration ordered a number of California and other Western state forest wildfires purposefully set with the intention of damaging and destroying federal and state forestlands, thus making them ripe for exploitation and sale to private interests.
California Republican Representative John Doolittle,....promoted the passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which permitted national forests to be purposefully thinned by timber companies to make them less susceptible to the fires, exacerbated by global warming, that were being set by others within the Bush administration.....
In 2003, California law enforcement concluded that a number of devastating fires that destroyed 718,000 acres in the state were the result of arson. Some within the Bush administration suggested that “Al Qaeda” terrorists could be behind the blazes.......
In Florida, ............, the St. Joe Company, a firm that has close financial ties to both Jeb and George H. W. Bush, has steadily encroached on lands adjacent to state and federal wildlife management preserves, state forests and parks, and national forests."
Glad to know our forests will be privatized to save the planet, and that the Bush and his crowd will profit from the AGW scam. Even Republicans are going for Green fascism.
Dr. Lovelock is British. He is the developer of the Gaia Theory. He is not just proposing burning trees. Read the article again.
It was Hansen who said we should burn trees, perhaps you sho reread the article.
"After that, a vigorous programme of planting trees to suck up carbon dioxide - coupled with the use of carbon capture equipment when the trees are burnt"
How is this different than coal, oil or gas. You can also sequester the carbon with the same technology proposed for the trees
And BTW, we can burn trees a lot faster than they grow. Nothing here about how many acres of trees are required to be burned per X% of our energy needs.
"How is this different than coal, oil or gas. You can also sequester the carbon with the same technology proposed for the trees"
Trees extract Carbon from the Atmosphere as they grow (Future).
Lifeless, Fossil fuels, acquired their Carbon long ago (Past).
Hanson is simply suggesting that we address the Future rather than the Past.
Effective Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology applied to any combusted fuel source, sequesters carbon in the Earth rather than the Atmosphere, regardless of fuel (Future).
Won't have to burn trees! We'll be able to burn American dollars soon because they'll be worthless.
Check out www.dangerouscreation.com for more pertinent observations.
You do know we only have 300 billion "actual" dollars in the US (400 billion outside). About 1,000 for every man woman and child. Fifty twenties won't produce much energy. Most of your money exists on a hard disk. Easily erased.
How right you are ~COCO~. ___~Jacques Costeau, scientist, explorer, oceanographer, inventor, a distinguished author, pilot, navigator, plus being a very fine man and parent, warned us and few if any listened. That was in 1960, so almost fifty of his warnig years is already passed by and instead of reducing burnig fossil fuels, it has doubled in that time period with no letup in sight. It may be too late, ___maybe not we'll see. I give us twenty max at the current rate the Arctic is thawing. Maybe five or less. Hope I'm way off there. ___ I never am though.
There have been two recent and very sucesful scientific expermints which if implimented may save our ignorant asses and also save the four legged ases, polar bears, republican senators and aardvarks from extinction.
In one, they seeded ocean clouds via a totally new method and enlarged them by many miles in size, this would allow less sunlight to strike the Arctic area and reduce the thaw there, which is the most serious and major problem in the short run. The long run is goingt to take some doing if we can beat the Arctic thaw and the release of 400 gigatons of methane gas into our atmosphere, an event which will relaly set off global warming on a grand scale and there will likely be no way to prevent a world wide disaster.
BTW, I see a few here are confusing "climate change" with "global warming". They are closely related isues, not the smame thing.
The second expermint was to collect methane from the atmosphere by use of huge fans set on high towers. It worked and the scientists explained how it could and must be done. I won't attempt to go into the details but it was fully explained on the science channel last week and it sounded to be feasible to silly old me, not being a scientist and kant enin spel rite.
We'd better get our stuff together and do something intelligent. Can't say "get our shit together" anymore with the new writing rules and
format.
THE TRUTH IS___ It is actually very simple and no one needs to be a scientist to undrstand it. Don't even have to be very smart, a half wit can get it.
For a moment or two, pretend that you are able to put a few ounces of "methane gas" into a cubic foot of water and freeze it there. ___ Okay, the methane gas is now safely locked up in your solid block of ice. Now___,,,, until, ___ until that ice is thawed, the methane gas will stay put for eternity, ___ forever, ___or from now thru perpituity.
How-some-ever, if your cubic foot of ice is allowed to melt, the methane gas will escape into our atmosphere, where over time EACH AND EVERY monocule or atom of it will become Co2 and will be 20 to 25 little old Co2s.
That is the situation in our Arctic's land and sea massses, where global warming is doing quite well with no cooling relief in sight there. The Arcitc is also ripe with methane and it is a "TICKING TIME BOMB", as Doctor Atcheson and a pretty gal scientist, among many other very smart people, who study the Arctic's perma-frost recently stated. I am not qualified to argue with them. Are any here so inclined? Well, not counting MIMIM. It's not MY words that count, I'm nobody.____ Read the link.
If you have NOT READ the article in the link I will now post, you are missing the most "three minute" fun and entertainment you will ever esperience.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
~Kem Patrick~
did you see my post to you kem on 16/9 @ 3.46pm? have i got it right?
The cost of wood would increase significantly. Homes built with wood would probably become unaffordable. Furniture would become very expensive. It seems there are few good choices.
Trees need not be burned to provide fuel! The 5% to 7% hydrogen content of most trees can be captured and re-formulated into a clean burning engine fuel that can be utilized in existing internal combustion engines.
The roughly 40% carbon found in most trees can be sequestered via the production of new, long lived, strong, light weight, graphene based, carbon enhanced materials that will further advance sustainability via lighter weight, stronger. longer lasting vehicles and equipment made without mining, smelting. etc. The high hydrogen and oxygen content fuel would far exceed any energy cost of logging,transportation, etc.
Of course, trees are not the only feedstock for this kind of process. The massive waste streams of America are another source of processable biomass. Combining these wastes with sustainable forests could move the world to a far better GHG position.
The co-production of hydrogen based fuel with the carbon based materials enables a cost competitive fuel at today's prices.
The major obstacle to putting this type of energy into the market is the failure of the government to equally divide policy benefits and subsidies between depletable energy and genuine renewables. The far greater subsidies and benefits that depletable energy resources(including nuclear power) receive function to make energy produced from depletable resources look more price attractive; that scares capital markets away from making major investments in genuine, clean, renewable energy.
As an historic campaign for President advances, I wonder why we hear nothing about this inequity that could impact all our lives and the planet itself. Ask a candidate if you get a chance.
Charcoal is fertilizer and stays in the soil for thousands of years. It promotes the sequestration of more carbon as soil biomass and stores more water in the soil than any other natural substance. It's called biochar or Terra Preta. To succesfully sequester our coal, oil and gas emissions just from the US we would have to convert every bit of living plant tissue in the US, Mexico and Canada to charcoal and bury it. Then we would have to repeat the process every year.
What we burn in a few minutes in our car's engines took millions of years to form. Oil is compressed time as well as compressed energy.
If this is as smart as the liberal community gets the planet is doomed.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
100% right ~CoCO~