NEW 12 minute VIDEO
The Promise of Biochar Dr. Johannes Lehmann
NEW 9 minute VIDEO
Making Biochar Peter Hirst New England Biochar

Endangered Earth
Humanity's great task in the 21st century is to restore the Earth. The Web of Life is badly damaged, poorly functioning, under threat. Climate change is the loudest and largest threat to the Earth's living communities. To have hope of a future, humanity's next generations must unite to repair our planet's life support systems, restore soil fertility and regenerate Earth's ecological communities.

NEW EVENTS
Founders Meeting Biochar Northeast Friday, November 13 Campus Center, UMass Amherst
Biochar Demo Day Saturday, November 14 NESFI, Belchertown, MA

Reviving our planet's damaged, declining ecosystem communities requires an unprecedented human commitment to Stewardship. Steady, sustained, earnest effort is needed by future generations to restore our planet's life support systems and build sustainable human societies.

Target: 350ppm
In 2008, led by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, scientists worldwide reviewed data on climate and greenhouse gases (GHG) to determine the critical threshold to set as our goal for a future. Their consensus is that geological records and computer models show that polar ice melt accelerates above 350 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Once polar and glacial ice melts, global warming will accelerate with little thermal restraint.

SPECIAL TALK
Locally Integrated Food & Energy North American Biochar Conference August 12, 2009

Therefore, climate scientists recommend that humanity should aim for
350 ppm
as our target
for maximum CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere.

This recommended data-based maximum is quickly being adopted as a global goal, and was highlighted in worldwide actions on October 24, 2009.

Carbon Excess

NEW DOCUMENTS
NEW RESEARCH MANUAL Guide to Conducting Biochar Trials Julie Major, PhD International Biochar Initiatv
Worldwatch Institute State of the World 2009 Into a Warming World Chapter 3 Farming to Cool the Planet
Congressional Research Service Biochar: Examination of an Emerging Concept to Mitigate Climate Change February 3, 2009

Current CO₂ is 387 ppm and rising. So CO₂ is already over the safe 350 level, and must be lowered.

Emission reduction alone will not remove the already excess GHG. The current Carbon Neutral goal to balance emission and removal (net zero emission) can't achieve 350ppm.

To lower GHG, we must go beyond Carbon Neutral to be Carbon Negative. This means more carbon is removed from the air than released into the air (net carbon reduction). Carbon in air is lowered, not increased. We must initiate and support actions that reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

Carbon Negative
To turn the corner on global warming and begin

Carbon-Neutral isn't enough We must be Carbon-Negative

to cool Earth's over-heating climate engine, we must extract GHGs from the air, and convert them to stable physical forms. We must sequester carbon in chemical forms that keep it out of Earth's atmosphere for centuries—preferably for millennia.

Several processes can shift us from carbon positive to carbon negative. Some are

NEW MANUAL
Guide to Conducting Biochar Trials Julie Major, PhD International Biochar Initiative

well-known traditions, such as regenerating forests and conservation grasslands, where carbon is stored in the dense diversity of life forms, from trees to soil organisms. Others are new, emerging technologies, such as producing renewable fuels and biochar from biomass. All these methods convert CO₂ into complex forms of organic carbon.

Organic Carbon
Photosynthesis is one of Nature's three main ways to fix carbon. Chlorophyll—the green pigment in plants—captures sunlight to pry hydrogens off water molecules, releasing oxygen and electric charge. Green plants harness this solar-powered hydrogen fuel cycle to combine water with CO₂ to create carbohydrates.

The primary products of photosynthesis are oxygen and sugar. On all the Earth, only green plants create sweetness from sunshine, water andCO₂.

NEW ARTICLE
One last chance to save mankind James Lovelock British Ecologist

Plants crosslink, spin and weave sugar into fibers, sheets and nets. Plants build their bodies from this condensed solar sweetness. Plant roots penetrate throughout mineral soils to secrete this organic carbon as a sweet treat for micro-organisms in the Soil Food Web. Even microbes deep in dark soil need sweetness from sunshine.

Thus, CO₂ becomes safely stored as organic carbon in biomass and soil.

Soil Carbon
For geological eons, soil was a primary carbon storage reservoir on the planet. Ancient prairie and forest soils held a few centuries of organic carbon. In fact, coal—our favorite fossil fuel—is ancient carbon fixed by trees.

20th Century forestry and farming quickly exhausted this critical element out of the soil and released it into the air. Now, for future generations, we need to put all that carbon—maybe more—back in soils.

Terra Preta
Fortunately, an ancient civilization left us a strategy to store carbon in soil, produce carbon-negative fuels, foster sustainable soil fertility, and grow nutrient dense foods. Terra Preta—the most fertile, productive and carbon-rich soils in the Amazon Basin—were made by ancient tribes beginning 6000 years ago. Their most unusual ingredient is charcoal. Making charcoal for fuel was done worldwide for millennia. But everyone is surprised to hear about putting charcoal in soil.

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Biochar
By converting biomass to biochar and spreading it on soil,

Carbon Farming
Agriculture has a huge carbon-positive footprint. Six to 20 calories of energy are needed to deliver one calorie of food to an American kitchen. All over Earth, soils—disturbed by deforestation and plowing, sterile from chemical fertilizers, pesticides and acid rain—are losing carbon and life, leaking fertility into air and water. We focus on obvious emission from tailpipes and smokestacks, and fail to see invisible vapors rising from fleshly plowed and fertilized farmland.

Yet, agriculture can be a huge net carbon sink to absorb vast volmes of carbon out of the atmosphere and store it as stable carbon in soil.

Regenerating the living communities in the soil and the sea is a fundamental task facing future generations. Primary allies in this effort are the least of all life forms—the micro-organisms. They are also Earth's most ancient community.

So, what we do to soil has exponential effects on Earth's other life support systems, including air and water quality, ecosystem diversity and capacity, food production and nutritional quality, carbon fixation and sequestration.