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Just because someone has theorised about the maximum potential for their favoured technology does not mean we should fear they will get what they calculate. Just as well. Soil is a huge carbon store, and the capacity to store more in soil is immense, but this is no motivation for cutting down all our ‘natural capital’ in order to do so. Biochar offers great promise, but it is just another arrow in the quiver of carbon sequestration. True the wealthy corporations will try to extract whatever they can from it so they can line their pockets even further, but we shouldn’t throw away such a useful technology just because somebody else might misuse it. We don’t all stop eating because some people are obese! From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of A&M Meikle Sent: 21 July 2010 16:18 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Climate change, carbon tax and standard of living I agree with Yunnus - we need a new 'story', a new way of thinking about how we live on this planet. And I still think that requiring c. 500m ha of land to sequester just 10% of global carbon emissions is a pretty good argument against biochar. At the 2008 UN climate talks in Poznan, Johannes Lehmann, Chair of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) estimated that under ambitious scenarios biochar could store 1 billion tons of carbon annually - equivalent to more than 10 percent of global carbon emissions, which amounted to 8.5 billion tons in 2007 (Ref: www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE4B45KB20081205) but it has been estimated that to sequester 1 billion tonnes of carbon per year, would require around 500 million hectares of plantations (1½ times the size of India) (Ref http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0906/full/climate.2009.48.html) Mandy http://mandymeikle.wordpress.com/ ____________________________ "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them" - Albert Einstein ----- Original Message ----- From: Mohamed Yunus Yasin<mailto:[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:50 PM Subject: Re: Climate change, carbon tax and standard of living I totally agree with Oliver. It is like giving medicie to a child whilst continuing to beat it to pulp! priorty should be mitigation, and not worry abt if it is too late. if it is too late, too bad, we deserve what we get. i totally have no confidence whatsoever in the human who caused this problem with 'technology' to then will solve it with 'technology'....time for us to stand still and hope that Earth is able to heal itself...that is all we have, hope. no more no less. yunus ________________________________ Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:07:43 +0100 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Climate change, carbon tax and standard of living To: [log in to unmask] Let's not forget black carbon abatement. It would be mad to be deploying reflective aerosols etc, while continuing to shower the Arctic in soot particles from forest burning, dirty old diesel engines, polluting industries etc. Oliver Tickell.