Agrarians from various ancient cultures around the world discovered the soil fertility benefits of charred biomass over two thousand years ago.
Now known as ‘biochar’, this ancient soil management practice has been enjoying a renaissance of late for a number of reasons largely related to the need for more resilient and productive soils and biochar’s ability to sequester carbon in a safe and beneficial manner.
Biochar is made by baking organic material in an oxygen-limited environment, called pyrolysis. Benefits vary depending on the soil, crops and climate where biochar is used with poor soils benefiting the most. Providing long-lasting organic material, improving water and nutrient holding capacity, and improving overall soil tilth are all potential benefits.
Due to its porous nature and cation exchange capacity, biochar can also be used as a filtration medium to prevent nutrient run-off from farms into local water bodies. In Europe livestock farmers are adding small amounts of biochar to feed rations to improve feed conversion ratios and overall animal health. Biochar as carbon fodder has also shown promise as a way to reduce enteric methane emissions.
“When we first started in 2011 to load biochar with high amounts of liquid NP-fertilizer and tested them in pod trials, we could prove reduced nutrient leaching after simulated strong rain events. When we planted a second culture (paprika after radish) in the same pods without additional fertilization, plant growth was significantly improved in the biochar treatments (see image). From an economic point of view, the difference in growth might have been not relevant as some additional fertilization would have been cheaper than the price of biochar that saved some mineral fertilizer. However working with low amounts of nutrient enhanced biochar [1 t per hectare] applied as slow release fertilizer close to the roots every year seems very promising when viewed from both an economic and ecological perspective. ” Ithaka Institute
Biochar is increasingly available to purchase but farmers can also convert their on-farm waste biomass in to biochar.
Farm scale equipment for making biochar is evolving and shows promise not just as a waste conversion technology which produces a valuable soil amendment, but also as a means for farmers to generate renewable energy in the form of heat, and in some cases electricity. For the Silo, Kathleen Draper.
Seen here: “…we focused on organic plant nutrients and started multiple tests with a wide variety of nutrient rich biomass wastes including: liquid animal manure, urine, feathers, yeasts, wool, vinasse etc. Over the past four years we have developed a panoply of organic carbon fertilizer that can be produced commercially or manufactured by farmers themself all over the world. One of our favourites is the sheep wool, vinasse, pyrolyse ash, biochar pellets with 7% Norg / 6.5% P2O5 / 6% K2O “
Kathleen Draper is the US Director of the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence, a non-profit focused on research, education and program services that promote climate positive solutions which enhance land management, urban design, and resource efficiency.
(Calgary, Alberta) The Canadian Federation of Taxpayers (CTF) has issued a new report on global carbon taxes, showing most countries have frozen or rolled back carbon taxes, but US climate scientist James Hansen is pushing for a $210/t carbon tax in Canada by 2030. Hansen’s argument is that the tax has to be high enough that people will buy into the carbon dividend (rebate to lower income households) – effectively making Canadians into carbon serfs and a carbon welfare society. CTF reports: “About half of the emissions covered by carbon taxes are priced below US$10/tCO2e, according to the World Bank’s most recent State and Trends of Carbon Pricing (2019).” Canada has more than 600 greenhouse gas reduction/incentive measures on the books, which have never been audited for effectiveness.
This begs the question of “what is a climate scientist doing dabbling in Canada’s domestic affairs on carbon taxes, pushing a carbon tax that is 21 times that of the world,” says Friends of Science Society.
As revealed by Lawrence Solomon in the 2009 article “Enron’s Other Secret” “James Hansen, the scientist who more than any other is responsible for bringing the possibility of climate-change catastrophe to the public, was among the scientists Enron commissioned.”
Enron had profited from cap and trade, but the company collapsed into a pile of ashes in 2001 due to off-book accounting and financial fraud.
None-the-less, a group of green billionaires took up the global cap-and-trade challenge, apparently working from the Enron carbon/cap-and-trade scheme model, as reported by Nisbet in 2018. Like Enron, they have funded local and global environmental groups to agitate for policies in countries around the world, favorable to their proposed global cap and trade plan. The plans require a price on carbon with the intention of funding their trillions in vested interests in renewables. Many of these groups are associated with the Tar Sands Campaign that has falsely created “Fear and Loathing” of the Alberta oil sands and driven a downturn in the economy.
Michael Moore’s recent movie “Planet of the Humans” revealed how this green crony capitalism is destroying the planet for no climate benefit.
Canadians now face an onslaught of Carbonbaggers – the number one being Mark Carney, now UN Climate Czar and former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor. Carney threatens firms with bankruptcy if they do not comply with his demands to report on climate risk and abandon fossil fuel investments.
Both oil production and consumption have risen by more than one million barrels per day per year since 2012.
• Oil demand is at its highest level in history.
• In absolute terms, oil demand is growing twice as fast as renewables.
• Global oil reserves have risen throughout the period, from 1141 billion barrels in 1998 to 1730 billion barrels in 2018; peak oil is nowhere in sight. That is a 10 million barrel per day increase over the nine years.
• In absolute terms, natural gas is experiencing the fastest rate of growth of all energy sources, almost three times as fast as renewables.
• Natural gas demand is at its highest level in history.
Friends of Science Society says carbon dioxide from human industry is a nominal influence on climate change, known since the 2013 IPCC AR5 report. The fact that financial ‘experts’ like Mark Carney are still pushing the climate-carbon dioxide catastrophe theme constitutes a violation of securities regulations related to ‘material change’. Furthermore, as Roger Pielke, Jr. reports, climate catastrophe scenarios are the product of green billionaires pushing the ‘climate porn’ scenario, which is far from reality or business-as-usual.
Friends of Science Society issued a request for ethics investigation into the development of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank in Nov. 2017. The Conflict of Interest concerns expressed there are still valid in their opinion.
Evidence from Norway to Zimbabwe shows that carbon taxes have no discernible impact on emissions reduction and are simply oppressive to taxpayers and industry. Friends of Science Society says Carbonbaggers should not be using carbon taxes as a means of creating a Canadian climate welfare state, especially not driven by foreign influences, street theatre, and deception.
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens who are celebrating its 17th year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).
