The Biochar Debate
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Biochar is a relatively new word in the green lexicon, but one you ll hear more about going forward. It isn t a silver bullet, but it may be a useful help in the climate challenge this slim book will let you think knowledgeably about it, and start to act in your own backyard. --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
A brilliant, readable review on the critical need to restore our degraded lands back to fertility be it to sequester greenhouse gases naturally, support forests, improve soil moisture or increase crop yields. Bruges outlines how supporting natural terrestrial sequestration is the cost-effective, proven practice to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and that this can be augmented via the use of soil amendments such as biochar. He concludes with examples that elucidate why tying biochar-based land-management solutions to one-size-fits-all market incentives risks time, money and public health. Our students say, It s a 101 must read a strong recommendation, indeed. --Alison Burchell, Geologist, Natural Terrestrial Solutions Group
The buzz of interest and activity around biochar in recent years is accelerating. In this concise but engaging book, James Bruges gets us up to speed with the ecology, economics and politics of biochar. Over three decades of speaking about and teaching permaculture, I have come across very few sustainable technologies that appear to change the rules about how to work with nature. Biochar is one of those few. Could biochar be the simple solution by which we can save civilisation from the twin crises of resource depletion and climate catastrophe? This sounds like an absurd claim, but not one that can be easily dismissed. James Bruges steers a course between the hope and the hype. --David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture concept and author of Future Scenarios
A brilliant, readable review on the critical need to restore our degraded lands back to fertility be it to sequester greenhouse gases naturally, support forests, improve soil moisture or increase crop yields. Bruges outlines how supporting natural terrestrial sequestration is the cost-effective, proven practice to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and that this can be augmented via the use of soil amendments such as biochar. He concludes with examples that elucidate why tying biochar-based land-management solutions to one-size-fits-all market incentives risks time, money and public health. Our students say, It s a 101 must read a strong recommendation, indeed. --Alison Burchell, Geologist, Natural Terrestrial Solutions Group
The buzz of interest and activity around biochar in recent years is accelerating. In this concise but engaging book, James Bruges gets us up to speed with the ecology, economics and politics of biochar. Over three decades of speaking about and teaching permaculture, I have come across very few sustainable technologies that appear to change the rules about how to work with nature. Biochar is one of those few. Could biochar be the simple solution by which we can save civilisation from the twin crises of resource depletion and climate catastrophe? This sounds like an absurd claim, but not one that can be easily dismissed. James Bruges steers a course between the hope and the hype. --David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture concept and author of Future Scenarios
Product Description
Charcoal-making is one of the oldest industrial technologies, and in the last decade there has been a growing wave of excitement about its potential for combating climate change. This is because burying biochar (fine-grained charcoal) is a highly effective way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition it can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture. Some people are concerned that awarding carbon credits for biochar could have seriously damaging outcomes. The Biochar Debate agrees, but describes an alternative approach, called the Carbon Maintenance Fund (CMF), that avoids the dangers. This would give every government the incentive to enable businesses, farmers and individuals to increase their country s carbon pool. It is based on remote sensing by satellite, a tried and tested technology, and would be applied globally each year to measure the increase or decrease of carbon in plants, soil and roots. 'The Biochar Debate' sets out experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming, the global economy and negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It concludes by encouraging all gardeners and farmers to use biochar to help prevent climate change.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this book hoping for a detailed technical analysis of the pros and cons of using biochar. Effectively what I have bought is a sermon with some scientific trappings. The book is a fairly standard, polemical left wing, green manifesto. Mr Bruges is clearly very much in favour of the use of biochar himself and really only presents his side of the argument. We also find out (on the way) that he is against: pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness, big businesses, carbon trading, genetic modification, nuclear power etc. Now this isn't necessarily a problem for me as I agree with much of what Mr Bruges has to say, but this is not what the book is supposed to be about.
It is a shame that he has wasted a good opportunity to explain a scientific subject by doing so in such a biased, unscientific way. Most of the factual content of the book is undermined by a host of un-referenced, subjective comments which detract hugely from the book's authority. While I sympathise with many of Mr Bruges points, I was not looking for another repetition of environmentalist dogma.
It is a shame that he has wasted a good opportunity to explain a scientific subject by doing so in such a biased, unscientific way. Most of the factual content of the book is undermined by a host of un-referenced, subjective comments which detract hugely from the book's authority. While I sympathise with many of Mr Bruges points, I was not looking for another repetition of environmentalist dogma.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Agricultural wastes heated to high temperatures in the absence of air eventually form carbon-rich charcoal, or 'biochar' as it is increasingly known. Added to soils, biochar improves fertility and permanently sequesters carbon. Biochar therefore provide a cheap and effective way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. James Bruges' book provides an elegant tour d'horizon of biochar science and agricultural practice. He gives us convincing case histories, based on personal knowledge, of how biochar can help food yields in poorer countries. He provides clear quantification of the importance of biochar in helping stabilise atmopheric CO2 concentrations. Biochar's critics claim that it may result in increased rates of deforestation and my only criticism of the book is that it does not deal extensively with this issue. But this is a minor quibble. This short book is readable, authoritative and clear.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
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