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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] 3 . Flip-flop Flannery is a climate changeopportunist

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] 3 . Flip-flop Flannery is a climate changeopportunist
  • Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:12:12 -0500

=https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/2009-February/032700.html
=[permaculture] 3 . Flip-flop Flannery is a climate changeopportunist
=Ryan Hottle ry.hottle at gmail.com
=Thu Feb 5 23:40:59 EST 2009
=
=I'm a supporter and practitioner of Permaculture and think biochar is among
=the most promising solutions to global climate change. I'd like to note
=that Clive Hamilton made no mention of any substance or scientific relevance
=about the benefits and risks of using biochar as a solution to climate
=change.
=
=Biochar is not exclusive in terms of being able to "cure" climate
=change--silver bullet solutions don't exist at this point--but it does seem
=to offer a promising and multi-faceted approach to producing energy,
=improving soils, and sequestering carbon in a single process. "Never do just
=one thing" right?
=
=It can be highly decentralized from small scale pyrolysis cookstoves to
=community scale combined heat and power carbon negative power plants. It
=can be combined with coppicing/pollarding and forest garden systems.
=
=The soil improving qualities are dramatic particularly in areas with
=extremely low soil organic carbon (SOM) such as places at risk of
=desertification, sub-Saharan Africa, and denuded landscapes in Tropical
=landscapes which tend to have highly leached and low nutrient soils.

Are you a farmer? Have you ever farmed? Or gardened? Do you know _anything_
about
biological, biointensive, regenerative, natural agriculture? Using massive
amounts of rock dusts,
manures, cover crops and mulch in agriculture?

Why does harvesting all or part of a crop just to turn it into charcoal only
to bury it in the ground make any sense at all?

Gaia Lovelock says that farmers are the logical group to participate in carbon sequestration by harvesting crop stubble, converting it to charcoal and returning it to the filds INSTEAD OF SIMPLY PLOWING THE STUBBLE UNDER TO INCREASE SOIL OM,
thereby increasing tilth, friability, life in the soil and fertility.

He doesn't know beans about agriculture and though I buy into his Gaia theory
completely he seems to have sold out
on the biochar thing without even looking at the long term benefits of
traditional regenerative farming,
and local food production.

LL




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