A Society that Had Totally Mastered Its Environment -- Video -- 49 min. A lost civilization in the central Amazon Basin seems to have surpassed modern science in their agricultural methods. How to make your plants grow faster -- Video
-- includes photos of how agricultural charcoal affects plant growth. -- Exploring Biochar's potential for reducing and removing CO2 while improving soils. International Biochar Initiative -- committed to supporting sustainable biochar production and utilization systems that remove carbon from the atmosphere and enhance the earth’s soils. "The overall bio-char process is carbon negative. A carbon neutral process is one that does not add to the climate change problem, but does not actually reverse the problem either. An example of a carbon neutral activity is burning biomass for energy in place of fossil fuel. The bio-char process, by contrast, produces a combination of both bio-energy and carbon-sequestering fertilizer from agricultural waste, which results in a net reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. As a soil amendment, char can sequester or store the carbon in the soil for hundreds and even thousands of years in the stable char matrix. Equally important, the char improves soil fertility, thereby stimulating plant growth, which then consumes more CO2from the atmosphere. The bio-energy produced as part of the process can be turned into electricity, process heat, ethanol, methanol, or soon, an ultra-clean liquid diesel fuel. The net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from both these products is thus reduced, making the bio-char process carbon negative and also regenerating soil fertility in the process." Biochar Articles and News -- IBI Member Projects Biochar Debate: George Monbiot: Problems With Industrial-Scale Biochar Proposals -- Biochar is not the easy answer to all our problems. James Lovelock: George Monbiot is wrong to dismiss biochar out of hand – burying carbon is one way to tackle climate change. Monbiot's criticism goes too far: – Chris Goodall: – Pushker Kharecha and Jim Hansen: Geting Started with Charcoal Lump Charcoal Database -- Reviews and readers' rankings of different brands of lump charcoal.  "This book is the first to synthesize the expanding research literature on this topic. This is all the more important at this juncture in the development of a biochar technology, as it requires an interdisciplinary approach involving engineering, environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, economics, and policy. The book provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge of the science and technology of biochar." |
