In a Wednesday session on using biochar as a climate stabilization measure, Nathaniel Mulcahy of World Stove explained that over 2 billion people worldwide cook on open fires. Constant open fires not only pose a carbon emissions problem, they pose a health risk, increasing respiratory distress and incidences of asthma. If they cooked their meals on a simple pyrolysis stove, instead of an open flame, they could sequester between 1-3 tons of carbon per person, per year, which is about what you'd get from an acre of pine forest, and significantly reduce indoor particulate.
Along the same lines, Mulcahy noted that 20 million tons of rice straw were just burned in Egypt every year. Ash from open fires retains as little as 3-5% of the original mass of carbon in the original plant material, and the nutrients are used up quickly. Char produced through pyrolysis, on the other hand, can retain 20-50% of the original mass of carbon, which can then stay in soil a long time and improve fertility.
And here, I should mention the ways in which combustion (burning things), digestion and decomposition are all similar. Each of these processes take carbon that was originally breathed in by plants, solidified by those plants into sugars, possibly eaten by a series of animals, and then returned to a gaseous state in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4). Having mentioned digestion and decomposition separately, I should proceed directly to tell you that decomposition is a word for digestion by microbes (bacteria and fungi,) and so while we think of it separately, it works about the same and isn't some inevitable, mechanical process.
- Police used sonic cannons, tear gas and stun grenades against demonstrators at the G20 in Pittsburgh. Police departments everywhere are apparently keen to see how that went over. Coming to a town near you? Jon Stewart didn't seem to think it was a big deal last night, but I don't like the idea of peaceful protesters and bystanders being treated like criminals.
- Health care issues aside, Sen. Harry Reid has done something impressively farsighted by introducing a bill to develop biochar technology for improved carbon cycle and water management. No snark, I'm blown away. It's possible that biochar could be done unwisely, but this article discusses how it could be used to benefit ailing forests and denuded soils in the US, while reducing invasive plants and fire risks in managed forests. And wow, just unreserved, holy frakkin' wow.
- The UK government will extend their popular car scrappage program, which has encouraged 200,000 Britons to trade in cars that were more than 10 years old, stimulating sales and saving manufacturing jobs.
- Sustainable food advocate Michael Pollan met some angry farmers and turned away their rage with mild answers.
- The leaders of Iran's air force and nuclear energy programs have pledged that Iran won't make a first strike and that the enrichment facility at Qom will be opened to IAEA inspections.
- Lastly, I didn't really expect to find any Leslie Fish on YouTube and I didn't find much, but find some, I did. Hope this one cheers you up in spite of the political environment.
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