Over the next several posts, I am planning on laying out in simple prose and imagery (with a few interesting links-I hope!-mixed in the pot) prominent indicators of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and the global heating which has begun to ensue as a result. It is crucial that the global citizenry get an easy-to-understand and concise picture of how we know that human activity is dramatically altering the Earth’s life-supporting systems.

Really, Really Elevated and Historic CO2 Levels in Life-Sustaining Atmosphere

At the present moment, the Earth’s lower atmosphere- responsible for providing us with just the right mix of molecular gases to sustain human life for the past 200,000 years plus- contains about 390 PPM of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the most prevalent and abundant greenhouse gas produced by humanity and has been released in ever-increasing quantities above ‘normal’ levels since the Industrial Revolution began. In fact, research released last year showed that we haven’t seen levels of CO2 this high in 1.5 million years! While the greenhouse gas effect is critical to supporting life on this planet, too much of a hot blanket can be incredibly suffocating to humans, other animals and plants, and ecosystems which have thrived in a relatively stable climate until very recently.

Here is a graph that shows the worldwide atmospheric levels of CO2 over the past 800,000 years, based on research conducted using ice core samples. Note the steady ups and downs of carbon dioxide levels until the past couple hundred years, when we dramatically shoot up to the current concentration of nearly 400 PPM, as well as the speed in which the CO2 increase has occurred. Coincidentally enough, these last couple hundred years coincide with the Industrial Revolution and the advent of fossil fuel combustion! :

Credit:www.wikipedia.org, by way of www.doi.pangaea.de

And, here is a snapshot of recent CO2 emissions data produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which releases official climactic and meteorological data on behalf of the United States government. The graph shows CO2 levels in the atmosphere- as measured in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, United States- on an annual basis, beginning in 1958:

Hmmmm. Don’t really see any downward trend at all there.

A grand experiment is being conducted, where we are testing how much of a very heat-absorbent gas we can put in the atmosphere before enormous, worldwide destruction can occur. And this experiment has never been conducted with human life on the planet. I can’t wait to see the results (odds are, Mother Nature will still be standing…us…?)!

Peace for now!

P.S. Some British researchers enjoyed some April showers last month. At the North Pole.

Greetings to all you beautiful Sadhana-ites on this bright blue and green globe!

First things first, I want to congratulate and express my awe and gratitude to the Rozin family for taking the Sadhana Forest model to Haiti! This recently devastated and long-suffering nation could truly use the kind of sustainable and restorative project that Auroville has had the benefit of hosting for the past several years. In a country where nearly all forests have been decimated up to this point in time, Sadhana Forest can truly begin to make a difference in helping to restore this lost ecosystem and assist Haitians in building self-sustaining communities that are also adaptable to the effects of global warming. And, of course, much love goes to all the long-termers and other volunteers who have traveled to Haiti to get the project up and running!

Now…so much of the attention today surrounding the global heating problem focuses on carbon emissions, carbon footprints, political wrangling amongst the nations of the globe, the ”failure” of Copenhagen, errors in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning reports of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc, etc, etc..All of these issues are,of course, important and hugely relevant to the climate disruption issue. But what often gets lost in the shuffle of this enormously complex and far-reaching pickle humanity and its fellow creatures find itself in is the on the ground adaptations necessary for the common folks across the globe.

There is nothing that we can do alone, as an individual human being, to combat the effects of locked-in and future greenhouse gas warming (according to a recent letter in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience, Earth is locked into an average worldwide temperature increase of about 1°C or a bit less over pre-Industrial Revolution levels even in the incredibly unlikely event we were to cut our carbon emissions to zero immediately. And, this level is based off models used in the U.N. IPCC climate change report of a few years ago, which did not take into effect possible positive feedbacks such as Arctic methane release). We must help and assist one another, to further extend our bonds of empathy to fellow humans and to all of Earth itself, so that we can thrive and lead infinitely more peaceful lives. A worldwide consciousness is beginning to awaken with regards to the pollution and other forms of environmental destruction that humans have wrought. Just look at the activist groups who attended the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen. Or the 350.org day of action-designed to draw awareness to a goal of achieving 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere- in October 2009, which Sadhana Forest participated in by way of an awesome morning of TDEF tree planting!

This is by no means a lightning-quick shift and much of humanity and other creatures on the planet will, and already are, facing long-lasting effects of climate change. But we can and must share our hearts and knowledge with those throughout the world, especially those in the Global South who have to adapt and mitigate to global heating’s effects, despite causing very little of the greenhouse gas problem. I am going to highlight some sweet projects that focus on bettering the lives, in a clean and non-polluting manner, of folks who may not otherwise have the resources to do so much:

America does have some awesome people, despite some thought to the contrary

A group of young students at Harvard University in Boston, USA, have developed a soccer ball that stores the motion energy produced while kicking the ball to use as electricity later! And all you have to do is kick the ball around! According to the above article, 15 minutes of use is enough to light a bulb for 3 hours!

Man goes back to roots, literally plants roots. OF A MILLION TREES

This Ethiopian-born, American citizen went back to his country of birth and discovered his home had been severely deforested. A crusade to mega-plant trees was launched and 1 million trees on 11,000 acres were planted.

I’ll trade you several fuel-efficient wood stoves for a solar system

A retired professor from Brandeis University in the United States encourages villagers in Tanzania to purchase very fuel-efficient, cleaner burning stoves (ala Sadhana’s rocket stoves!) and receive a small solar system that charges a battery for lights, cell phones, and other household items. Cool! And the amount of trees, carbon dioxide, and soot/”black carbon”is reduced. Win Win Win!

Shalom/Hello/Vanakam/Mahalo Sadhana Foresters !!!

Hope all is well and fascinating wherever you are in the globe. I’m going to do a run of posts here where I focus on a specific topic, and post some links where you can read more about the subject if you like.

Solar energy has the alluring potential to be a clean, plentiful, and utterly renewable way to power humanity’s existence. If only 0.3% of the United States’ land mass were covered in solar panels (in a desert region, where sun output is the highest), America could harness the amount of electricity that it annually consumes. There are, of course, environmental ( some of the chemicals used to produce current, conventional solar cells are very toxic and create intensive greenhouse gases to boot ), technological (current, top-level solar technology only operates at 10-15% of true efficiency), and climactic  (where I live and was raised,Seattle,The Sun often lies comfortably tucked behind the clouds) hurdles that humanity must overcome when producing and siting solar power projects. Yet, The Sun is and will be one of humanity’s greatest sources of energy as we Earthly beings continue to spin ’round and ’round it- with the caveat that the transition from fossil-fuel to clean-energy driven societies will require the usage of fossil fuels for many of our new technologies (if we can’t shut down coal plants immediately, lets make them as efficient and waste-free as possible in the interim!).

Concentrated solar power (CSP), or solar thermal, is a promising, proven and potentially very critical energy technology that could allow us to eliminate billions of tons of fossil-fuel derived greenhouse gas emissions. Very basically, The Sun’s UV rays strike mirrors- often shaped like parabolas- which concentrate the sunlight into attached tubing that holds a heat-absorbing material such as molten salt. The material, which can also be liquid in nature, is heated to a temperature where steam is created. The steam, in turn,drives a turbine that allows the production of clean electricity (another solar’ farm’ model places thousands of parabolic mirrors around a tower that holds the heat-absorbing material and onto which the mirrors focus the UV rays on the tower to generate heat). As well, because of the ability of the liquid/molten salt/ other kind of substance within the tubing to hold heat, it can be stored for later use (for example,when the sun has gone down or high electricity demand means more kinds of electricity need to be utilized) to create electricity for residential and commercial areas. For a fascinating and detailed piece on the history and potential for solar thermal technology see here: Joe Romm is awesome!!

Let me be very clear: I do not think that massive solar farms in the deserts of the world should be humanity’s main source of power. Nor do I think they should be even the main apparatus for transforming The Sun’s energy into electricity. Distributed forms of solar power- that is, solar installations located on commercial and residential rooftops and throughout communities generally-  provide for localized electricity production and eliminate the need for high-voltage, long range transmission lines to carry the electricity from remote locations. This article highlights a recent distributed solar energy project agreed to by a utility in California. I believe that the more local- of anything!- the better for the surrounding communities. Yet, solar thermal plants can and should be a very crucial element of the world’s energy production portfolios, along with appropriate wind, tidal, geothermal, biomass, waste, etc. energies.

A couple other cool pieces of info: the government of India has called for 20,000 MW of solar power for the country by 2022. This would allow for the powering of millions of homes and business in a near-pollution free manner (including in the many parts of the country that still lack electricity) and would allow for many jobs to be created in the construction, operation, and maintenance of the solar panels.

And, with regards to the mention above of toxic materials in conventional solar panels: Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered a way to create biodegradable solar cells from tobacco plants.Yes, tobacco! Read more here.

Less cancer, more solar!!

Love for now-

Josh

As most of you are surely aware, December’s United Nation Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP15 meeting in Copenhagen, originally intended to hammer out a sweeping international treaty on greenhouse gas reductions, failed to produce just that. Yet, a document known as ‘The Copenhagen Accord,’ albeit not legally binding in nature, was produced from the two-week maelstrom that was the U.N. Conference of the Parties and helped to hopefully set the stage for the world to reach an international agreement by the end of this year. Although I would not advise you to hold your breath just yet (especially if you, and the rest of the global community are looking towards the hopelessly dysfunctional United States Congress for major climate change legislation to emerge this year), all is not completely lost as the major players/greenhouse gas emitters are now on board to some extent. Ohh, the complexities we humans create for ourselves, even when Mother Nature is clearly telling us something is very off!

Nitty Gritty Details

The Copenhagen Accord (actual text here) was drafted by 28 countries, including the United States, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, who are the largest current and future carbon polluters in the world.  Though the deepest and most dramatic cuts, based on historical responsibility for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, should and will be put forward by the wealthiest nations, the Copenhagen Accord did bring large, recalcitrant Global South nations who had previously resisted being subjected to any international oversight into the fold. The Accord, though obviously well-short of a legally binding measure, was ‘noted’ by 188 of the 193 UN member countries.  Among the notable points of the agreement:

• It asked nations that accepted the agreement in some form to begin listing their commitments to mandatory greenhouse gas emission reductions (in the case of wealthier, “Annex 1” countries) or mitigation efforts (in the case of poorer, “non-Annex 1” countries) by 31 January 2010. This date, according to UNFCCC director Yvo de Boer, was merely a “soft deadline” (yay for jargon and diplomat-speak as the world burns!). As of this month, 110 countries representing over 80% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions have associated with the Copenhagen Accord.
• The Copenhagen Accord mandated that future warming of the planet be kept to 2 ° C above pre-Industrial Revolution levels by 2100, with a reviewing of the scientific literature in 2015 (where an eye will be turned to the consideration of adjusting the global temperature cap downwards to 1.5°C. Presumably, this theoretical target is a nod towards island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu who called for a 1.5°C rise only. There are credible fears that beyond this point, sea level rises could be triggered which would submerge low-lying, island nations such as these). According to climate scientists, actually capping worldwide average temperatures at a 2°C rise would leave the Earth’s atmosphere with a concentration of 450 ppm of CO2 from today’s current 390 ppm. There is some thought that catastrophic events such as increased flooding, droughts, quickened glacial melt, crop devastation, and ever-larger methane releases from drying permafrost in the Arctic could begin occurring with much higher frequency beyond 2°C. A 1.5°C rise, on the other hand, would allow the world to stabilize at the much lower concentration of 350 ppm, which prominent climate activists such as Bill McKibben advocate for: http://www.350.org/
• A worldwide commitment, through a so-called “Copenhagen Green Climate Fund” mechanism, that would provide $100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to the poorest and most vulnerable nations in the world for global warming mitigation and adaptation efforts. Nearly $30 billion in foreign aid would also be disbursed by 2012.
• Worldwide forests need to be protected for their abilities to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide- amongst their other fantastic qualities- and countries with large stocks of vulnerable forests should be rewarded through efforts such as REDD/REDD-Plus .
• Technology mechanism for the transfer of global warming mitigation and adaptation technology knowledge amongst nations

Oh, and about that whole science thing…

Those who are disappointed that the Copenhagen climate talks did not produce a successor or continuation to the Kyoto Protocol have every right to be. According to the latest scientific evidence, global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak within the next few years and then draw down very sharply after that point. Climate scientists, most prominently through the IPCC, say that we need to cut our worldwide greenhouse gas emissions 50% from 1990 levels by 2050 (80% of the cuts would have to come from ‘developed’ and major ‘developing’ countries) and 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020 if we are to stay below 2° C. Unless countries start to put into place their national emission reduction plans as soon as possible, even in the absence of a binding international treaty, the world won’t meet that target and the more frequent natural disaster-scenario will be a near-certainty by the middle of the 21^st century.

It is very frustrating that the vast majority of the scientific community agrees on the general limits humanity should place on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but governments nonetheless plod along and reach abstract, albeit better-than-nothing, ‘solutions’ like the Copenhagen Accord.  The United States, no doubt, has been the biggest foot-dragger in terms of global warming policy over the last couple decades that climate change has become a major global concern. But say what you will about President Barack Obama, he is at least making a valiant attempt to bring the United States back onto the international climate stage after years of inaction by the George W. Bush administration.

Humans and their Optimism

Surprisingly and pleasantly enough, the 17 biggest carbon polluters on the globe have proposed climate change policies independent of the U.N. process that if enacted to their fullest potential, would bring the world only five gigatons of carbon reductions away from meeting the temperature cap of 2° C (more here)! With the limitless potential of- renewable energy solutions- the sun, the wind, the oceans, cleaner-burning wood stoves, and good old-fashioned energy conservation- eliminating those five gigatons of emissions is possible with enough will. The United States, the EU, Japan, South Korea, China, and India among others have planned legislative actions that would slash emissions to levels that bring us within striking distance of atmospheric stabilization of 450 ppm (with enough global resources, 350 ppm could also be met). Though this does not get us exactly to the climate stabilization point, we are also not impossibly far away.  Worldwide consensus on global warming emission reductions can be seen as much closer than many media outlets might lead you to believe. And, as use of renewable energies and energy efficiency measures increases dramatically over the next several years due to national/international greenhouse gas reduction laws and private investment, the health benefits and access to cleaner environments will become apparent.

As well, China and India- the world’s #1 and #4 greenhouse gas emitters respectively- have now agreed to be subjected to ‘international consultation and analysis’ of their greenhouse gas emission measures. Though the Chinese and Indian governments will not be obligated to make mandatory cuts by the international community- at least initially- both nations did put forward domestic plans to cut carbon output before the Copenhagen Climate Conference (in fact, India has plans to install 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022: Good Day, Sunshine.) These voluntary, national measures have now been put on the table for international viewing. I did not expect a full-blown international treaty to come out of COP15, and I don’t think many who followed climate negotiations prior to the meeting did either. But to get the largest future emitters in China and India, as well as Brazil and South Africa, on board to some sort of building-block agreement is something that had not been able to be achieved previously and lays the seeds for future, more concrete measures to cut emissions. As an American citizen who came of age under the eight-year administration of George W. Bush- a man who worked to weaken and destroy any potential international climate treaty- any sort of far-ranging agreement that includes China and India is a step forward.

Finally, no international agreement on climate change will be reached without the consent of my resource-sucking, flawed (yet beautiful, to me!) country of residence, the United States. As every single country in the U.N. must agree to allow a treaty to come up for a majority vote, America not only has to be part of the agreement but must be, as it is the world’s second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter.  If America does not pass a greenhouse gas reduction and clean energy/reforestation/energy efficiency investment bill, then it will not sign a U.N. treaty. The Copenhagen Accord, as it has corralled on board the major developing nations (read: China!), seems to meet one major requirement that many United States Senators say would allow them to vote for a domestic climate change bill and thusly, to sign off on an international treaty. There is a lot of work to do- much, much work to do on getting an American bill signed into law- but the Copenhagen Accord lays an important initial foundation.

These are just a few of the reasons why I think the U.N. Copenhagen Climate Summit does not have to be considered a death knell for climate change policy across the globe. A new consciousness, shown very vibrantly in Copenhagen at the end of the ‘00s, has begun to awaken around the global heating harm inflicted on Earth and its myriad breathtaking organisms by human activities. We have the resources and ability, though it will require some level of sacrifice on the part of everyone, to make the changes to our societies, to our economies, to our ways of life that bring us all back in balance with our surroundings. Gaia is already melting her glaciers and Arctic and Antarctic ice, burning large swaths of her forest lands, and flooding and withholding rains in ever more- recurrent fashion. Why not try to cool her down a bit?

Humanity is a part of nature and cannot be apart from nature.

-Josh

P.S.: A couple links to give you a couple interesting perspectives on the Copenhagen Accord:

NRDC: Yay

Bill McKibben: Nay

Global Warming: The Sobering Truths for Humanity without Action

Greetings and Happy New Year to Sadhana Earth!

After a long break from the Sadhana blogosphere and a strictly physical (spiritual remnants remain amidst the bananas at Sadhana) move back the West Coast of the United States, I have been asked to return with my form of global heating enlightenment. Much love to Aviram and Yorit for allowing me to write for the Sadhana Forest web page

Rather than delve into a specific issue of interest in the global warming and global warming policy arena in my first post in some time, I want to provide readers a helpful look at what basic challenges humanity faces due to global heating’s effects. I am providing a link to a very thorough and straightforward summary from the Climate Progress blog of the multitude of ecological harms that could occur by the end of the 21^st century if worldwide greenhouse gas pollution emissions continue at/around their current levels:

An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water « Climate Progress

Mother Earth will respond, and is (note: rapid melting of glaciers from the United States to the Andes of South America to the towering Himalayas of India and Nepal, years-long drought and immense dust storms in Australia, prolonged drought, followed by torrential monsoon rains in southern India, et al) currently, to the heat-trapping waste we put into her lungs.

And in case you in Sadhana cyberspace are sitting in the immense cold sweeping much of Europe and the United States, don’t worry:

GLOBAL WARMING STILL HAPPENING EVEN THOUGH IT IS WINTER IN SOME PARTS OF THE WORLD. CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALL ABOUT AVERAGES, SILLY!

In my next post, I hope to lay out simply what the Copenhagen Accord reached at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in December means and why, despite the claims of many, hope is not completely lost to reach broad international agreement on greenhouse gas reductions.

Love and Peace for now!!

-Josh

As the process of securing a strong and ambitious greenhouse gas reduction and global warming mitigation/adaptation treaty moves along quite slowly before the U.N. talks in Copenhagen (December 7-18), Brazil has put forth a potentially game-changing proposal. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has agreed to slash the deforestation rates of his nation by 80% of its present levels by 2020. This commitment, if pursued to its fullest, would prevent nearly 5 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and dramatically cut the greenhouse gas emissions of Brazil, as deforestation is their major cause of CO2 release and accounts for one-fifth of global carbon release.

From a humanitarian perspective, preserving the remaining rain forest in Brazil would maintain the home and livelihoods of the people that have depended on the Amazon for so many years. It could also  greatly lessen the use of incredibly biologically rich lands for livestock (accounting for upwards of 20% of global carbon emissions)  and biofuel production (largely going to Western industry and automobiles), which only serve to create further greenhouse gases emissions through methane release and lost carbon uptake from the destruction of forests.

This commitment from Brazil sends a strong message to the international community that global nations from across the economic spectrum can come together to work for a tough and fair climate change treaty. As countries such as China, India, and Brazil grow ever faster, and the demand for energy continues to rise, it is thought that most emission increases will come from these nations over the next several decades. Thusly, moves towards prevention of greenhouse gas emissions in these nations are essential to any effective post- Kyoto climate treaty. But those countries in the Global North, which are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution, have a responsibility to quickly mitigate their own fossil fuel output drastically and provide financial and technical assistance to those nations who will be most dramatically affected by global warming’s consequences.

Human-powered global warming will (and is) affecting every human and organism on the planet. Efforts like Brazil’s deforestation plan- albeit just one piece of the puzzle- show that the world’s nations can, and will have to, work in unity to maintain a livable Earth for all creatures.

-Josh

I will keep things brief for once on this blog. Today was the International Day of Climate Action, organized by the group at 350.org. People from 181 countries across the world, including us at Sadhana Forest (check the News page for more!) sent visual messages to media and leaders across the world that we want to stabilize at 350 PPM of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from our current level of 390 PPM. Though this figure is incredibly ambitious, we should at least set ourselves to eventually meet this target for future generations by beginning to deploy clean energy technologies,  practice reforestation, and  employ ecologically sound agricultural practices.

Today was a call to action for those setting greenhouse gas reduction policy across the world to recognize that global citizens want and demand the most ambitious targets possible for a climate change treaty at Copenhagen in December!

Courtesy of www.350.org

I came across a stunning article recently, posted on one of my favorite (and incredibly informative) climate change blogs Climate Progress, that I wanted to share with you:

Levels of Carbon Dioxide Today at Levels Not Seen in 1.5 Million Years

Human beings are at a stage in our existence that can be considered to be globally historic. So historic, in fact, that the climactic state in which we find ourselves currently in has not been observed on the Earth for nearly the past 1.5 million years! When last we saw greenhouse gas concentrations at this consistent level -currently at around 387 parts per million (PPM)- average temperatures around the globe were 5-10 degrees F (2.78-5.56 degrees C ) warmer and sea levels were 75-120 ft. higher, according to the above article.

We have managed to manipulate our atmosphere to an overheated condition not seen since over million years before Homo Sapiens came to be. And all of this has occurred in the past 200 + years since the inception of the Industrial Revolution. This is an incredibly fast rate to have injected this amount of greenhouse gas into our atmosphere, especially when you consider, as the article notes, that CO2 levels consistently hovered around the pre-Industrial level of 280 PPM 1.5 million years prior to the Industrial Revolution. Earth is now nearly 90 PPM above this nearly million year long average rate, and it only took us 200 years.

The time to act is now. Leveling off and then dramatically reducing our carbon atmospheric input over the next several years will be essential to keep future generations of animals and plants, as well as ourselves, from the most catastrophic global heating has to offer.

Photo Credit: http://www.systemedecroyances.net

I feel as though the effects of human-induced climate change on our planet are very often presented to people by mainstream media sources  as occurring in some vague, distant future. And it is true that Mother Earth will be feeling the effects of our fossil fuel spewing ways for potentially hundreds of years down the line if we do not take drastic actions to cut our greenhouse gas emissions soon (there is already a 30 year lag between when a carbon dioxide molecule enters the atmosphere and when the associated temperature increase occurs, meaning we won’t feel the effects of what we put in the atmosphere in 2009 until 2039). But the abnormal effects of human actions are very much present in the here and now.

A recent Reuters article on the very rapid melting of Kashmir’s largest glacier is just one of the many illustrations of the current consequences of our warming ways.

Keeping in line with the theme of glacier melt, here is a story from earlier this year regarding the melting of (what was once) the world’s tallest ski area in the Bolivian Andes.

Global “heating,” as British scientist James Lovelock now refers to our climate situation, is having drastic effects on people and their environments across the world. Today. But, mitigation and adaptation techniques are necessary and in our hands if we choose to turn back our carbon-heavy ways in the next 5-10 years.

A global effort is required. A shift in consciousness towards oneness with the Earth is required.

Talk soon.

-Josh

I wanted to write a little something about a possible tool in our Earthly kit to help slow down the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,  provide a closed loop source of energy, and improve greatly the fertility of soils:  Biochar(coal)!  A triple whammy that could potentially have a great impact on Mother Earth.

Biochar is what remains of organic material (forest debris, agricultural waste, animal manure, grass clippings, etc.) after being put through a controlled “burning” process in which oxygen intake is almost fully suppressed. This process, called pyrlosis, releases just a fraction of the greenhouse gases that normal, open-burning techniques produce as the near lack of oxygen does not allow combustible molecules like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to form. As well, gases such as hydrogen are emitted as a result of the pyrolysis process that,with proper equipment, can be then used to produce energy/electricity for buildings. Hence,  a closed loop in which all aspects of the char are used.

The tangible remnants from pyrolysis  produce a very nutrient rich charcoal that can then be applied to the soil, in a process similar to what Amazonian Indians had done hundreds and thousands of years ago with their methods of producing biochar. Today, one can see these soils- called ‘terra preta’- and how they still retain the rich composition that had existed so many years ago.

And most importantly from a climate change perspective, the production of biochar locks carbon emissions into the soil for an indefinite period of time rather than allow for normal decomposition that releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases from biomass to the atmosphere. Livestock waste, forest debris remnants, gardening waste, and other forms of organic matter from the human lifestyle can be turned into a useful material to hold in carbon, enrich soils, and potentially provide clean electricity !

Here is a wonderful overview, along with more links on the matter, from an environmental blog which I read frequently and is very comprehensive in its coverage of environmental issues: Gristmill.

That’s all for now! Peace and love!

-Josh