The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings) |  | Author: James Bruges
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 369636
Media: Paperback
Pages: 128
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 160358255X
Dewey Decimal Number: 631.8
EAN: 9781603582551
ASIN: 160358255X
Publication Date: January 21, 2010
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Product Description
The Biochar Debate is the first book to introduce both the promise and concerns surrounding biochar (fine-grained charcoal used as a soil supplement) to nonspecialists. Charcoal making is an ancient technology. Recent discoveries suggest it may have a surprising role to play in combating global warming. This is because creating and burying biochar removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Furthermore, adding biochar to soil can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture, reducing need for synthetic fertilizers and demands on scarce fresh-water supplies.While explaining the excitement of biochar proponents, Bruges also gives voice to critics who argue that opening biochar production and use to global carbon-credit trading schemes could have disastrous outcomes, especially for the world's poorest people. The solution, Bruges explains, is to promote biochar through an alternative approach called the Carbon Maintenance Fee that avoids the dangers. This would establish positive incentives for businesses, farmers, and individuals to responsibly adopt biochar without threatening poor communities with displacement by foreign investors seeking to profit through seizure of cheap land.The Biochar Debate covers the essential issues from experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming to fairness and efficiency in the global economy to negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 A solution may be within our reach February 13, 2010
Malvin (Frederick, MD USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Biochar Debate' by James Bruges is a primer about one of the few known solutions to not just alleviating, but reversing the effects of global warming. In this informative book, Mr. Bruges positions biochar as an earth-friendly response to an urgent environmental challenge imposed upon nature by industrial capitalism. Written with clarity, passion and purpose, Mr. Bruges encourages us to support biochar as an integral part of a strategy that puts people before corporate profits.
Mr. Bruges provides an overall view of global warming, making clear that the planet is well on its way towards becoming inhospitable to human civilization. Mr. Bruges briefly recounts how biochar was used successfully by generations of farmers in the Amazon to improve soil fertility, musing how biochar might help resuscitate soils that have been depleted by industrial agriculture. Indeed, he provides compelling case studies that demonstrate how biochar is used today by growers around the world to achieve better yields at lower cost. The author goes on to discuss the science of how biochar absorbs greenhouse gases and provides estimates on how much biochar might need to be produced to achieve meaningful results, offering hope that a solution may be within our reach.
Importantly, Mr. Bruges stresses that biochar must be a tool that is used to empower small farmers and not push farmers further into the tentacles of big agribusiness. The author discusses the many reasons why top-down schemes that privilege financial speculation in the form of carbon trading generally do not benefit those who work the land. On the other hand, the author believes that the knowledge and the means to produce biochar could provide badly-needed revenues to small farmers, allowing them to nurture the environment and strengthen their local communities. Indeed, the recognition that the kind of sustainable living and production practices of which biochar might be a part are essential towards envisioning a more hopeful future.
I highly recommend this book to everyone.
One of the most practical solutions to the global warming crisis every put forward February 7, 2010
Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com))
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
At this point in the scientific argument, few if any people with any credibility doubt the reality of global warming, in fact that is really no longer the issue. The debate is over the economic consequences of proposed solutions, which drives the last remaining doubts being expressed over global warming. Given the enormous scale of the problem, any effective solution will have costs that are also enormous. Government intervention is fraught with political problems as wealthy interests are willing to spend enormous sums to delay any countermeasures that will affect their welfare.
Fortunately, there is a solution and you see it being implemented all over the world. Small units, from the family to farms to other businesses, are implementing green policies and lowering their carbon footprint. The method to remove additional carbon from the atmosphere put forward in this book is the creation of charcoal, an easy process given a biomass raw material and then incorporating it into the soil. There is a great deal of evidence that charcoal will restore the fertility of depleted soils. This is not a new idea, when I was young a relative that was an old farmer was adamant about spreading the ashes from his wood stove on his garden and farm fields. What makes this solution practical is that it is a tactic that could be used by small farmers around the world and could be done at a profit.
Agriculture produces an enormous amount of biomass, a great deal of which could be utilized. Bruges describes historical and recent examples of societies and farmers that have converted biomass into charcoal and achieved significant improvements in soil fertility. Given that the carbon in the charcoal stays locked in the soil for thousands of years, this is an effective way to "permanently" extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The threat of global warming is real and we may have already reached the tipping point of no return. Solving this problem is going to take a concerted and diffuse effort and the use of charcoal is yet another effective tool that can be used. This is a fascinating book as it puts forward a solution where carbon can be extracted from the atmosphere in a profitable manner that is easy to implement.
Clear, concise and hopeful April 6, 2010
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Before I had read this book I had not even heard of biochar. But then I am a city boy. And therein lies a tale of today's world. Too many of us are city boys and not enough of us have any real understanding of where our food comes from and how.
Biochar is the result of the pyrolysis of biomass, including trees, leaves, grass, and everything that grows. Biochar is also made from the waste products of animals. The method is to heat the "feedstock" (the biomass) to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The result is charcoal which ideally is used, as the subtitle of the book has it, to build soil fertility. Biochar--"finely crushed charcoal used for soil enhancement" (p. 107)--does this by returning minerals and especially carbon to the soil. Because of its porous nature biochar is excellent for dry soils because it can hold water in the soil. Mixed with manure and compost, biochar is an ideal fertilizer and has been used as such by indigenous people the world over for thousands of years.
Mixing biochar into soils is also a way of sequestering carbon. When biomass is burned without the presence of oxygen the carbon in the biomass does not combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Consequently there are two main advantages of using biochar: one, it helps the soil to be more fertile, and two, it keeps carbon from getting into the air as carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas. To the extent that the biochar stays in the soil, the production and use of biochar reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: the plants that are made into biochar drew the carbon dioxide out of the air for their growth. According to author James Bruges biochar can stay in the soil for literally hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Bruges has observed the use of biochar in many places in the world and especially in India. This book reports on his experiences. Central to his experience is that the production and use of biochar works wonderfully well in an environment of smallholders in agrarian communities. If biochar becomes part of a cap and trade process, Bruges warns, land will be given over to industrial farms growing a monoculture in order to get carbon credits. This would be a disaster for small farmers and would result in higher food costs.
There are a number of other problems with implementing and maintaining a biochar culture. Bruges explores these difficulties and offers solutions. Clearly biochar is just one method in our effort to return the world to sustainability. Heaven knows we need all the help we can get.
A book every citizen should read February 28, 2010
S. Robbins (Palm Springs, CA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Our planet is going to hell in a hand basket and it is everyone's responsibility to try and save it. This book presents a debate over biochar, charcoal that is put back into the soil, to reduce greenhouse emissions and improve soil. Much of the book are arguments for doing this and historical facts about past use and scientific warnings. I was wanting more of the book to be about where this is now being done and how to do it in my own backyard. It does present cases in India and Africa but some of it is only brief blurbs. It is a scientific book but written for laymen to read. After reading the book, I was eager to do more to help the environment and very afraid of the dire consequences if something on a massive scale isn't done quickly.
This book presents a method that can be done in every third world village with little expense and beneficial to the inhabitants. Since big companies and politicians are going to spend till doomsday arguing over the environment, it is up to the citizens of Earth to save it themselves.
Natural resources libraries need this May 16, 2010
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility offers the first book to introduce the promises and ideas of biochar (fine-grained charcoal used as a soil supplement). It offers new ideas on the relationship between biochar and combating global warming, telling how to use it to increase crop yields and help the soil. Natural resources libraries need this.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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