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  • From: Nicholas Roberts <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, Robyn Francis <robyn@permaculture.com.au>, Tom Toogood <ecoed@dodo.com.au>, Jack Heimsoth <djspiritsoul@gmail.com>, Peter Wood <drwoood@gmail.com>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Biochar - Gaia Permaculture
  • Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 16:59:23 +1100

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html?full=true
One last chance to save mankind

- 23 January 2009 by *Gaia
Vince*<http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Gaia+Vince>
- Magazine issue 2692 <http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2692>. *
Subscribe* <http://www.newscientist.com/subscribe?promcode=nsarttop> and
get 4 free issues.
- For similar stories, visit the
*Interviews*<http://www.newscientist.com/topic/interviews>and
*Climate Change* <http://www.newscientist.com/topic/climate-change> Topic
Guides

*With his 90th birthday in July, a trip into space scheduled for later in
the year and a new book out next month, 2009 promises to be an exciting time
for James Lovelock. But the originator of the Gaia theory, which describes
Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of
humanity. He tells Gaia Vince <http://www.wanderinggaia.com/> we have one
last chance to save ourselves - and it has nothing to do with nuclear power*

*Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC
ban<http://ozone.unep.org/Publications/MP_Handbook/Section_1.1_The_Montreal_Protocol/>that
saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar
thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?*

Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam.
Carbon
trading<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225805.900-a-licence-to-carry-on-polluting.html>,
with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry
wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll
make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of
reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent
countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely
unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt -
that's an awful lot of countryside.

*What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?*

That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so
long and use so much energy that it will not be done.

*Do you still advocate nuclear
power<http://www.jameslovelock.org/page11.html>as a solution to
climate change?
*

It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global
cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.

*So are we doomed?*

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive
burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural
waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer
sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil.
Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the
system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

*Would it make enough of a difference?*

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only
30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is
released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like
bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by
getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn
it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A
little CO2is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You
get a few per
cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer
can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit.
This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they
won't do it.

*Do you think we will survive?*

I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C
of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not
survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we
would not find enough
food<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13517-major-food-source-threatened-by-climate-change.html>,
unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is
going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the
end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened
before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only
2000 people left. It's happening again.

I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's
coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except
endless talk and meetings.
I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle
what's coming up

*It's a depressing outlook.*

Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see
humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first
appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty,
poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of
enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first
time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent,
communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things
about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a
way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

*How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?*

We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal
Maximum<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum>event
55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO
2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed
by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The
polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move
north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there
doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in
the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK.

*If you were younger, would you be fearful?*

No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me
of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened
but almost everyone was so much happier. We're much better equipped to deal
with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It's not all bad when
things get rough. I'll be 90 in July, I'm a lot closer to death than you,
but I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to being 100.

*Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year?*

Very much. I've got my camera ready!

*Do you have to do any special training?*

I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the *g*-forces. I don't
anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships
out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't
think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201
heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an
average 20 year old, they said.

*I bet your wife is nervous.*

No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because
I'm not.

--
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor




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