Re: [CDR] Increasing biomass demand enlarges negative forest nutrient budget areas in wood export regions

[Thomas Goreau]

Dear Jens,

BECCS is a very irresponsible proposal for many reasons, and is yet another dangerous geo-engineering antithesis of Geotherapy, restoration of our natural planetary life support systems.  

One of them is, as you point out, that it strips nutrients from soils, most of which are nutrient limited. 

So the maximum productivity BECCS enthusiasts enthusiastically project can only be achieved by addressing those deficiencies, which they do not seem to understand. 

Rock weathering, the major source of most plant nutrients, depends on geology, and the degree to which soils have lost nutrients from leaching and crop export, as your studies of river element export show so clearly. 

Addressing these limitations are best done using slow release natural materials that last for decades, such as rock powders, which can provide all the nutrient elements plants need except for nitrogen, mixed with biochar to retain nutrients and water, and make then directly available to plant root mycorrhizae.

But the most irresponsible aspect of BECCS, apart from competing for land with food production, is that they propose to pump CO2 into holes in the ground and thereby remove carbon from the natural biological recycling that regulates biological productivity, carbon storage in biomass and soils, atmospheric composition, climate regulation, and maintains our soil and groundwater resources. 

That’s why making biochar from the weedy invasive biomass that has taken over so many waste lands where forests have been converted to agriculture, pastures, and urban areas, and regenerating soil fertility, useful productivity, and carbon storage is the responsible long term solution to increasing natural carbon sinks. See: