[Stoves] [biochar] Methane from char-makers [1 Attachment]

Tue Mar 5 23:22:16 CST 2019

Crispin:

Nope. The point of national inventorying was to create a narrative of blame and duty allocation. 

The earth doesn’t care what goes in and comes out where. 

FCCC in and of itself says nothing about accounting. That is the game of Kyoto and Paris, and SubSTA. 

Science has nothing to do with all climate action protocols. 

Biomass changes also trigger isoprenes. I need to read up on the developments there. 

Just credit methane emission reductions at $100/tCO2e, ok? Recognize that policymaking is about multiple objectives. 

Nikhil Desai

Skype: nikhildesai888

> On Mar 5, 2019, at 10:13 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Nikhil 
> 
> I thought the whole point of national inventories was to count what comes out and what goes in. If you really want to draw down CO2, melting permafrost permanently is a good way to do it. 
> 
> The fact is the forest that grows on it far out-strips the CO2 and CH4 emitted from the old biomass that accumulated underground the last time the climate was warm enough to grow it. 
> 
> The creationist position that the underground biomass was put there by God to confuse scientists, that it didn't grow there, doesn't pass the laugh test. If we accept that the Arctic used to be warm enough to grow a forest and accumulate that much material in the ground and swamps, we have to admit that warming it again will see the forest regrow. 
> 
> The "methane bomb" meme ignores basic plant biology. When you melt a swamp it grows a forest. There are tens of millions of sq kilometres of proof standing all over the northern hemisphere. 
> 
> To believe a swamp melts and that the stored vegetation will rot and nothing will grow is plain silly and against all evidence. Pine trees will grow on bare rock it is warm enough for a few days a year. 
> 
> There is deep permafrost under the north end of Ulaanbaatar and trees grow there just fine. Look outside the city to the north and what do you see? Vast forests all the way into  Russia. And it is still permafrost, just not as near the surface as, say, east of Inuvik where it only melts down a foot from the surface for a few weeks. 
> 
> The UNFCCC can't count methane out and not CO2 in and call it "accounting". 
> 
> Regards 
> Crispin 
> From: ndesai at alum.mit.edu
> Sent: March 5, 2019 8:08 PM
> To: crispinpigott at outlook.com
> Cc: schmidt at ithaka-institut.org; wastemin1 at verizon.net; psanders at ilstu.edu; d.michael.shafer at gmail.com; stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] [biochar] Methane from char-makers [1 Attachment]
> 
> Crispin:
> 
> Science gets screwy when scientists become accountants.
> 
> Who cares if the permafrost methane emissions are "more carbon is captured above the ground than could possibly be emitted from it "? 
> 
> The FCCC circus is about NATIONAL inventories of GHGs.  From 1990 on.  Doesn't matter what happened in 1950 or 10,000 BC. 
> 
> N
> ------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831
> Skype: nikhildesai888
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 12:16 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>> Thank you Nikhil
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> The reason I use the contextual argument that methane from permafrost is not and cannot be an GHG issue is because there are 20m sq  km of forested evidence that more carbon is captured above the ground than could possibly be emitted from it – by a factor of about an order of magnitude.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> There are relevant papers published looking at the methane emission rate from melting at the northern edge of the permafrost in Alaska (which I remind everyone is largely covered in forests that weren’t there, not long ago). LiCor even developed an instrument specifically for making this measurement.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Like many things to do with climate, the “methane bomb” is decontextualized. It looks at half the balance sheet.  It is like saying “I am going bankrupt driving to work because of the cost of transport,” omitting the fact that the work produces income.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Unknown to many people is that the tundra is not “empty” it is covered with tiny trees. A 200 year old pine tree is about 15” high because it grows only a few days per year in late summer.  When the permafrost under it melts, it immediately grows as fast as the local conditions permit. That is why Northern Ontario above Kapuskasing is covered in “lodge pole” forest while further south they have 100’ pines.  The enormous Eastern White Pine ships masts supplied to the English Navy, which they used to conquer the Empire, came from Port Hope Ontario and were floated to Plymouth.  They grew on what was permafrost 15,000 years ago.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 1000 years ago, when the Arctic was 5 or 10 degrees warmer than now (or whatever it was) Southern Greenland didn’t have any permafrost. Now it does.  Vikings are buried in it. Vikings were tough, but they didn’t farm permafrost with wooden ploughs. It was during times like that that the biomass was laid down in the ground in the first place. Currently, the “tree line” is hundreds of kilometers south of where it was 6000 years ago. If it melts, the forest will return, as always.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Because of CO2 fertilization, trees now grow 30% faster than they did only 150 years ago, and also require less water per kg of accumulated biomass. There is paper showing that one gene edit that might increase the efficiency by 40% (published in Feb) which is the equivalent of increasing CO2 to 1200ppm, the concentration used in commercial greenhouses in Ontario.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> If anyone wants an exciting excursion into how the outrageously high “GWP factors” for exotic gases are calculated, have a deep look into it. It is hilarious. Essentially they take a modest number for CO2 and divide it by a highly uncertain but miniscule number and produce an output like “20,000 times”.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> It is a half-ring circus where all the ticket money goes to the most outrageously dressed-up clowns.
>> 
>> Crispin
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Crispin:
>> 
>> A side note for the moment; will write more on the Stoves list when time permits. 
>> 
>> Michael said, "Everyone I know and all of the articles with which I am familiar use the 100 year standard. "
>> 
>> I want to clear the impression that this matter of convention is simply discretionary. Not at all. It is a political choice pushed by the global environmentalists at the expense of the local environment and hence, indirectly, contrary to the interests of local living things. 
>> 
>> This is because the reason for short-term forcing due to methane is ground-level ozone, which is otherwise regulated as a criteria pollutant in the rich countries. 
>> 
>> Ever since this deceit began 30 years ago, I have preferred to use 20-year GWP. I rationalize it by saying "People before Planet."
>> 
>> Those who say "Planet before Profit" essentially mean "Profit before People." 
>> 
>> N
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Nikhil Desai
>> 
>> (US +1) 202 568 5831
>> Skype: nikhildesai888
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 4:32 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Greetings Friends
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Regarding the incentive not to burn agriwaste badly: farmers in Hebei province (which surrounds Beijing) burn a huge amount of biomass each year to get rid of it and to put the minerals back. The only interest they have in selling it is if the price is high enough to justify the cost of collection, and in some cases, delivery.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> When there is zero economic incentive (like having a saleable product) no one will bother with such an arduous task. To be frank, the government is not really concerned with the burning, it is all about the air pollution. If you want to  burn it without smoke (which is not difficult) no one cares. Leaving on the ground means it rots to methane, either on top or as mulch.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> As I have mentioned before, the Hebei Province has several factories that produce char from agriwaste and make liquid fertilizer on a large scale. It is not used locally, but exported to other nearby provinces because the product is subsidised at those destinations so the producers get a better price.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Some of the raw material is put into methane digesters and piped in to the local gas network. The opportunity to do that at a much larger scale is ever-present, but the cost of collecting it exceeds the gas value benefit.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> Crispin
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Han-Pieter,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> No apologies required. This is a sensitive subject and the discussion has proved very informative. Thank you, in particular, for clarifying a number of points here that were previously missing in the discussion. First, the 20 time horizon. Yes, the GWP of methane declines rapidly over time, starting much higher than 25 and falling to 25 as the "at 100 years standard." I think that it is very important to make the short-term time scale of these calculations clear because I have never encountered them before. Everyone I know and all of the articles with which I am familiar use the 100 year standard. Second, there is your contention that TLUDs and Kon-Tikis operate in the same universe. I think that they do not. In our TLUDs, the rising gases, including of course, CH4, meet the air arriving at the gap above the barrel and instantly ignite. As they flame up the stack and above, they reach very high temperatures. Thermal gun measurements have reached almost 1,000 C. I do not believe that at this temperature we are throwing off much CH4. Our one closed room rest did not register any. Our troughs and trenches, like all Kon-Tikis and flame-caps, are another matter. Not having any data on temperature, James Joyce's comment, I do not know what the temperature is or whether it rises above 690 C.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Finally, with crop waste fires producing 5.82 kg of CH4/tonne of biomass burned and using the GWP multiplier of 25, CH4 from crop waster burning is a big issue, especially when combined with the other primary emission, NOx at 3.11 kg/tonne and a GWP multiplier of 298. When there are hundreds of billions of tonnes of crop waste that cannot be collected for high tech pyrolysis, this means that for every one of those hundreds of billions of tonnes, 1.073 tonnes of eCO2 is being emitted. Because this stuff can be charred only using loc-tech, the loss in the methan component of eCO2 calculations is very hard on anyone trying to find a way to engage the rural poor of the developing world in charring not burning. Profit margins are razor thin already and the potential of carbon sales at present offers the only hope that sustainable business models can be found.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> You may be correct, but if so, there are a huge number of small farmers who will have no incentive not to burn.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> M
>> 
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