CROPS paper

[Andrew Lockley]

I've read through your paper in detail and I note the following. (I
may have missed some things of course)

1) You don't discuss anaerobic decomposition to methane in the ocean.
Is it a risk? Outgassing may be immediate or by clathrate
destabilisation.
2) You don't discuss pyrolysing the waste to char before sequestration.
3) You consider burying the waste, but you do not consider creating
biochar and burying that to create terra preta
4) You reject the idea of burning crop residues and using CCS, but do
not provide a quantitative analysis of the carbon content of biomass
by % compared to other fuels, so it cannot be determined whether
burning is relatively more efficient than for other fuels.
5) You do not directly consider the production of char by pyrolysis
then onward transport of the fuel to be burned in sites suitable for
CCS. It may be that thermal and industrial inefficiencies preclude
this, but this cannot be assumed. Further, char is likely to be
compatible with existing coal plant, when raw crop waste is not.
6) You do not consider anaerobic digestion of the crop waste to make
methane gas for power generation or large-vehicle transport fuel.
This technology is used extensively in the UK for food waste, albeit
on an emergent scale.
7) You do not consider the alternative of storage of waste in the
desert. If transported by rail to the desert, crop waste could dry
naturally and then be sealed with plastic in bales. This is an
obvious alternative destination for the waste.

A

[Stuart Strand]

1. Significant methane production seems unlikely, but it may be possible in deep deposition sites. Anaerobic metabolism in ocean sediments is dominated by sulfate as the electron acceptor, not CO2, as in freshwaters. We expect crop residue mineralization under anaerobic conditions inside the bale to be slow, so sulfate in surrounding waters would have time to diffuse into the bales. But if the bales are stacked too deep sulfate will be exhausted and methanogenesis will start. If methane is produced it will not be as bubbles (which could penetrate the thermocline), but as dissolved methane, due to the pressure. Dissolved methane will be oxidized as it diffuses up through the sediment and the water column where aerobic and anaerobic methane oxidation occurs (the latter coupled with sulfate reduction). So methane from the crop residues is unlikely to reach the atmosphere.

The above is our working hypothesis, but this is a question that must be answered with experiments in situ, which would also provide data to estimate parameters needed for modeling and design.

2 and 3. I am working on comparisons to pyrolysis now and I have discussed first impressions previously on this group.

4. readily available info, Andrew

5. see above

6. C Lossy. Andrew, biomass is a poor energy source, whether you make methane, ethanol or biochar from it.

7. Not as safe as the ocean I would judge. But it is something we could do temporarily, while ocean research and the expected political wrangling on CROPS is done. But transportation costs to and from deserts and the landfilling operations to try to keep moisture would be costly and CO2 productive.



  = Stuart =

Stuart E. Strand
167 Wilcox Hall, Box 352700, Univ. Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
voice 206-543-5350, fax 206-685-3836
skype: stuartestrand
http://faculty.washington.edu/sstrand/

Using only muscle power,  who is the fastest person in the world?
Flying start, 200 m 82.3 mph! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Whittingham
Hour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_record
55 miles, upside down, backwards, and head first!

[Andrew Lockley]

It methanogenesis starts, it can fairly quickly undo a lot of your
work. Even if it doesn't directly reach the atmos. any effect on
partial pressure may affect exchange with the atmos and thus raise
methane concentrations in the atmos. Even if the methane is oxidised,
all that CO2 is eventually going to cause you problems.

Open storage in the desert should be possible. Here in England we
have massive warehouse-sized towers of straw bales. They take ages to
rot, even in our rainy weather. Fire is the biggest problem.

As regards carbon content, it's not readily available for various
different kinds of straw, husk, cob etc that you might be dumping. I
assume it varies between plants?

The purpose of pyrolysing to char is to reduce bulk, enhance
consistency and reduce bioavailability. I wasn't intending to use it
as an energy recovery process. Surely a few hundred kgs of char
powder is easier to handle and sequester than a ton of damp straw?

A

2009/2/3 Stuart Strand <sst...@u.washington.edu>:

[Stuart Strand]

I thought I explained the methanogenesis issue pretty well previously and I don't understand your reasoning in the first paragraph below. The oceanographers I have talked to agree generally with my analysis, so I think I'll leave it at that.

Temporary storage of crop residues in the river basin is a good idea. Probably at local depots, away from flood prone areas.

  = Stuart =

[Alvia Gaskill]

Stuart and I also discussed the possibility of disposing of the crop residue
in abandoned coal mines. At the time you said you were concerned about
oxidation there and if the environment were anoxic, conversion to methane.
KABOOM! I proposed coal mines, since they would not involve ocean disposal
(obvious) and might be closer to the fields.

The issue of oxidation time is, I believe, not trivial. While it would be
desirable to have the carbon gone forever, as in the case of deep ocean
disposal, a storage time of 100 years would be attractive as well. If one
believes that major technological advances are going to be made in the areas
of renewable energy and also in air capture of carbon dioxide within the
next 100 years, then placing the residue in an environment where it would
slowly decay might be acceptable also. The carbon credits could then be
priced and prorated to reflect storage lifetimes.

Example: a ton of unbaled wheat straw will completely oxidize to CO2 in a
field in 3 months (my estimate). The same ton baled up next to the field
will last for 5 years (another made up estimate just for the purpose of
comparison). Storage in an arid environment might extend the lifetime to 25
years. As for the methane issue, why not cover some of the crop residue and
collect the methane for use as fuel for transportation of the residue to
deep ocean or other disposal locations? This would not require any complex
technology as this is how methane is collected from municipal waste
landfills. Methane from landfills is a proven use of stranded energy and
could be applied to crop residue disposal as well. If the methane cannot be
directly used to provide fuel for transportation of the crop residue, it
could be sold and the funds generated used to purchase diesel fuel. The
cost of diesel fuel appears to be the single greatest cost of the CROPS
strategy and reducing that cost with stranded energy generated by the
process seems like a win win plan.

[Andrew Lockley]

I already suggested methane recovery. Methane from landfills is a
rather unreliable technology, and involves significant leakage. You
can accelerate production with a 'flushing bioreactor' design, where
water is pumped through. However, bearing in mind the fill would be
100pc crop residue, the landfill (plus all the complex layering and
piping) would just collapse in a big wet mess - belching out huge
amounts of methane into the air as it did.

Far better to use anaerobic digestion if you wish to recover methane.
You can then use this methane for grid gas. I don't know if you use
natural gas (methane) in the US but in Europe it's piped to most
buildings for heating and cooking.

A

2009/2/4 Alvia Gaskill <agas...@nc.rr.com>:

[Albert Kallio]

In the long run, I think the only reliable way to store carbon is to set up carbon sequestration forests and then plant and cut these and place the wood mass in old mines, coal or gravel pits. Though, I can't see how coal-fired power stations could sequester economically carbon this way. I think it is very efficient in locking carbon away, but costly.
 
Wood can be also stored almost indefinitely in deep waters and there are many areas in Arctic where some lakes could be made to act as carbon sequestration log warehouses
 
I think crop residue and hay harvesting is 'too easy way out' here, although water logged peat bogs do store carbon, something similar would have to take place. On the other hand, melting permafrost (i.e. warmer future climate) will intensify decay and placing hay or crop residue to water-logged, or burying hay in permafrost, do not work in future if the climate is much warmer. Otherwise, hay-burial in permafrost would be an attractive option.
 
In my mind this leaves good storages for carbon-sequestration logging such as the sea, lakes and man made coal and gravel pits where the logged wood can be put safely to salt carbon dioxide away from the athmosphere.
 
Someone should make estimates how much this kind of forestry would cost by doing it where it could be done cheapest. May be initially, by just cutting off trees and planting new ones. Later when best sites have been done away, sites that require planting and fertilisation would be looked at.
 
Initially, the idea of carbon sequestration logging would be just to get as much carbon salted away as cheaply as possible, perhaps also making this as some sort of employment generation social programme. 
 
So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits and seasides...
 
Rgs,

Albert

> Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:57:35 +0000

> Subject: [geo] Re: CROPS paper

> From: andrew....@gmail.com
> To: agas...@nc.rr.com
> CC: sst...@u.washington.edu; xben...@aol.com; geoengi...@googlegroups.com

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826542.400-burying-trees-to-fight-climate-change.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

discusses the idea of burying biomass extensively. I don't like the
tradition of 'cut and paste' content, as I know how to follow a link.
But when in Rome.....

A few years ago, Ning Zeng began to wonder about the hidden potential
of landfill sites. He had been discussing a mystery with his students:
for some reason, North America's carbon dioxide emissions are not
quite as high as they "should" be. Perhaps, one student suggested,
America's huge landfill sites were acting as carbon sinks. After all,
a lot of what is thrown away does not decompose: even 50-year-old
newspapers can be perfectly legible.

Zeng, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland in
College Park, later calculated that the amount of carbon sequestered
in this way is actually tiny, but it gave him an idea. What if we
could sequester the carbon locked up in trees in such a way that it
doesn't get released back into the atmosphere? Could we store enough
of it to offset a meaningful amount of emissions?

It sounds like a long shot, but Zeng is convinced it could work. In a
recent paper in the journal Carbon Balance and Management (vol 3, p
1), he calculated that if we buried half of the wood that grows each
year, in such a way that it didn't decay, enough CO2 would be removed
from the atmosphere to offset all of our fossil-fuel emissions. It
wouldn't be easy, but Zeng believes it could be done.

Zeng's is not the only proposal of its kind. Other researchers are
totting up the amount of carbon that could be sequestered in various
kinds of biomass and are finding that it is a surprisingly large
amount. Not enough to halt climate change on its own, perhaps, but
enough to make a sizeable dent in atmospheric carbon and to buy us the
time we need to sort out the mess we've made.

The idea of burying carbon in biomass makes sense: plants remove CO2
from the air to produce carbohydrates by photosynthesis. The carbon is
returned to the atmosphere when the plant dies and decays. Planting
trees to sequester carbon is approved under the Kyoto protocol, but
critics of this approach point out that the carbon locked up in
forests is only kept out of the atmosphere for as long as the tree is
alive, and that older trees start emitting more carbon than they take
up as they reach old age. Recent studies have also suggested that
warmer temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 may eventually kill
trees, casting doubt on the use of forests as long term carbon sinks
(New Scientist, 27 October, 2007, p 42).

There is a lot of interest in the possibility of sequestering CO2 in
disused gas and oil wells or porous rocks, or even in ocean beds.
Trouble is, finding viable sites for this kind of project is tricky
and the technology needed is far from ready. Burying biomass, say
enthusiasts, has none of these problems.

Wood burial is perhaps the simplest of the ideas. Zeng's proposal is
to thin forests regularly, and to bury excess wood, forestry waste and
even trees that have been grown specifically to be buried in trenches
between the remaining trees. To prevent the wood decomposing and the
carbon being released, it would need to be buried deep enough to avoid
being broken down by soil fauna and fungi, or stored above ground in
watertight shelters. Zeng gives an example of a plot of 1 square
kilometre (100 hectares), with the excess wood from 1 hectare of
woodland buried deeper than 5 metres and down to 20 metres. He
calculates that this could sequester 1 tonne of carbon per hectare -
using that land to grow trees would sequester 1 to 5 tonnes, depending
on the age of the forest and the type of tree. Burying wood sounds
like a lot of trouble for a small gain, but Zeng insists that, unlike
simple growing, this is a long-lasting and perhaps permanent carbon
sink. He estimates that offsetting all of the world's current
emissions would be achievable with a workforce of one million people -
substantially fewer than those already employed in the forestry
industry in the US alone. Even so, to offset all our emissions, most
of the world's forests would have to run a wood burial scheme.

Zeng's idea may be the new kid on the block, but another approach to
carbon burial has a much longer history. More than 500 years ago
Amazonian people were creating almost pure carbon by smouldering their
domestic waste and letting it work its way into the soil. This earth,
known as terra preta ("black earth") remains to this day, in some
areas half a metre deep.

Such charred organic matter, or "biochar", can be made when organic
matter is heated in the absence of air to around 350 °C - the kinds of
temperatures reached in the Amazonians' smouldering waste piles. "The
lack of air means the organic matter does not combust, but most
constituents other than carbon are driven off as gases or liquids,"
says Malcolm Fowles at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, who
studies the process. The leftovers are charcoal-like chunks of nearly
pure carbon. Ancient farmers had no idea that they were sequestering
carbon, of course, but they did know that adding biochar to the soil
hugely increased its quality.

The Amazonian method can reduce pretty much any organic material to
char, given enough time, but it works best with dry materials like
dead wood. A modern alternative is called hydrothermal carbonisation -
which steams organic material under pressure until it is reduced to
char. This process also works with wet material like green wood and
household waste. Until recently, hydrothermal carbonisation was a slow
process, taking days to complete. But Markus Antonietti of the Max
Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, has
found a way to speed it up to between 5 and 12 hours. His technique
uses citric acid as a catalyst at a relatively low temperature of 180
°C. It's a very simple process, "really nothing more than a pressure
cooker", says Fowles.

Once the reaction has got going both these processes readily produce
heat, which could be used to generate electricity or heat water. But
there is a trade-off: the more heat the process produces, the more CO2
it gives off and the less carbon you have left at the end. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, low-temperature hydrothermal carbonisation produces
less energy than high-temperature pyrolysis, but it still gives off a
worthwhile amount. "It readily gives off heat," Fowles says.
"[Antonietti's group] has had some rather entertaining laboratory
explosions." Once the process is explosion-proofed, Fowles says, it
might be possible to sell household water-heating units that need only
trash, food scraps and garden debris for fuel. Such units would make a
small quantity of biochar on the side. "You'd be looking at it as a
way in which people who are suffering angst over global warming could
make a contribution," he says.

Once the process is explosion- proofed, people could make carbon and
bury it at home
Jim Amonette, a soil geochemist at the US Department of Energy's
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, sees
biochar working as an industrial-scale technology too, with economic
benefits as well as environmental ones. "My vision is that every
municipal landfill is going to have a pyrolysis unit," he says.
Logging companies may start using it as a way to obtain carbon credits
for disposing of the debris left over from logging. "There's a company
in Washington state that is starting to head that way," he says.

Re-filling the sinks

Another idea to sequester carbon as biomass is to let nature bury its
own by restoring natural carbon sinks. One such project is already
under way on Twitchell Island, on the delta of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento rivers, east of San Francisco. Researchers are replanting
marsh grasses and bulrushes (cattails) in the hope that when they die
they will accumulate beneath the surface and gradually transform into
peat. It's the same process that created the marshes after the last
ice age, but this huge carbon sink, covering nearly 1300 square
kilometres, was drained for farming more than a century ago, leaving
the peat to dry out and rot away at a rate of about 2.5 centimetres
per year. Since draining, the land has dropped by up to 6 metres.

Eight years ago, Roger Fujii of the US Geological Survey undertook a
study to see how quickly it might be possible to rebuild the peat. The
answer appears to be even faster than it was lost: up to 10
centimetres per year once a marsh has had a few years to mature. That
offers the prospect of a substantial amount of carbon sequestration.
Fujii and Bergamaschi calculate that reflooding the whole delta and
converting it back to tules - a form of bulrush - would be equivalent
to swapping all of California's SUVs for high-efficiency hybrids.

Part of the benefit of reverting to peat marshes comes from shutting
down ongoing peat oxidation which, according to Fujii's colleague
Brian Bergamaschi, causes emissions of about 17 tonnes of carbon per
hectare per year. On a delta of over 130,000 hectares, that really
adds up. Since building up new peat takes about 60 tonnes of carbon
per hectare per year out of the atmosphere, the net benefit is
something like 77 tonnes per hectare, Bergamaschi says. That is
substantially more carbon sequestration than you would get from
planting forests (see Diagram). Even so, all of these approaches bump
into the question of how far they can be scaled up to sequester
meaningful quantities of carbon. Tules may be highly efficient carbon
accumulators, but there are only so many areas that can be converted
to marshland. Based on Bergamaschi's preliminary estimates from
Twitchell Island, it would take a tule marsh more than double the size
of California to offset most of our current carbon emissions.

The production of biochar could also be used on a massive scale, in
theory. In a paper presented at the American Geophysical Union last
December, Amonette estimated that biochar production could halt the
rise in atmospheric CO2, but we would have to pyrolyse and bury at
least 8 per cent of the Earth's annual biomass production to do it.
Conservationists might have a thing or two to say about that.

None of these approaches need stand alone, of course. Zeng does not
envision a globally or even nationally coordinated wood burial scheme
- he sees small-scale activities by individual owners of wooded land,
paid in carbon credits. This is the key to many of these schemes: to
get off the ground they will ultimately need to be approved for
inclusion in carbon trading schemes - and the price of carbon will
have to be right.

Bergamaschi is confident that investing in tule marsh would be an
attractive prospect. With carbon priced at ¬23 ($36) per tonne on the
European market right now, he adds, it is beginning to look like
farmers could earn about ¬1400 to ¬1700 per hectare. At that level, "I
think you're going to see widespread interest." Amonette estimates
that biochar processes could also become a highly sought-after
investment - as long as the price of carbon credits is in the region
of $20 per tonne or more. Zeng sees wood burial becoming viable at
around $50 per tonne.

There are a few hurdles to get over before any of these projects will
be ready for launch onto a global carbon market, if and when such a
thing gets going. One key issue is how long the carbon will stay
sequestered. Ideally, the carbon would stay captured indefinitely or
at the very least for thousands of years. Some Amazonian terra preta
has already persisted for more than 2500 years, Amonette notes.
Elsewhere, a carbon-14 study by Amonette's colleague, Johannes Lehmann
of Cornell University, has found that charcoal residue near abandoned
kilns in America's Appalachian mountains indicates that charcoal has
persisted for a century or more. Restored peat marshes will continue
to gather carbon for as long as the marsh is maintained, or until it
is completely submerged in rising waters. Zeng says that carbon buried
in wood could only stay sequestered permanently if it could be buried
under perfect, unchanging conditions so the wood would never rot. Zeng
isn't clear exactly what those conditions would be, and offers perhaps
a more realistic estimate of 100 to 1000 years.

None of these solutions offer sequestration on the timescale promised
by geological solutions such as injecting CO2 into abandoned gas
fields, but even the lower end of the range is long enough, Amonette
reckons, to buy time for a smoother transition to energy sources with
lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Another big problem for all biomass sequestration schemes is methane,
because it tends to be generated when biomass is broken down by
methane-producing bacteria in the soil. As a greenhouse gas, methane
is about 20 times as potent as CO2. Its saving grace, to the extent it
has one, is that it is short-lived in the atmosphere. It persists for
about 10 years, so transient burps, as one area of buried biomass
breaks down, for example, will not warm the planet for long. Despite
that, it would not take much methane to wreck a carbon-sequestration
scheme. Fujii's team is looking into methane generation in their tule
marsh, and their preliminary results look promising. Methane doesn't
look to be a showstopper, Bergamaschi says.

Burying wood in the wrong types of soils might also generate methane.
"It would depend crucially on where and how you bury it," Zeng says.
Termites, in the regions where they live, would be another problem.
They could eat the buried wood, converting its sequestered carbon back
into CO2 through respiration. Zeng also admits that removing dead wood
on a large scale could destroy the habitats of woodland species that
specialise in breaking down wood, and have the knock-on effect of
depriving plants of the nutrients that these species release.

Despite its long history, much about biochar remains unknown too. The
Amazonian's terra preta, Fowles says, was made by a quite different
process from that being considered today. They smouldered organic
waste directly on the land and covered the char with more waste in an
ongoing cycle. "The mulch protects the char, and animals churn up the
soil, taking the carbon down with it," Fowles says. "The assumption
that you can just plough it in [and have it stay there] is completely
untested."

So can we be sure that sequestering carbon in biomass will truly help
to stave off global warming? It's a pressing question because, as
Amonette points out, scientists keep finding that climate change is
occurring more and more rapidly than anyone previously anticipated.
"We don't have much time," he says. "We have to implement something
fairly quickly. It may not be the perfect solution, but it's better
than the disaster of waiting 40 or 50 years for the perfect solution
to be found."

2009/2/4 Albert Kallio <albert...@hotmail.com>:

[Tom Wigley]

Isn't the forestry industry already doing this -- except they are
storing the carbon in buildings, paper, etc.

They make money out of this -- so who would pay them to chop down
trees and simply dump them?

Tom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++==

[Albert Kallio]

Hi,
 
The forestry in the Arctic is only cutting what are needed for paper, much of it being recycled.
 
Paper decomposes and releases things back rather easily and waste is often burned.
 
So conventional forestry does not act as a carbon sink.
 
Huge areas of Arctic are never forested and it is these areas where there might be potential.
 
Rivers carry water to Arctic Ocean where any logs would sink to sea bed
 
Rgs, Albert

> Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 17:49:26 -0700
> From: wig...@ucar.edu
> To: albert...@hotmail.com
> CC: andrew....@gmail.com; agas...@nc.rr.com; sst...@u.washington.edu; xben...@aol.com; geoengi...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits and seasides...

[Mike MacCracken]

I remain confused about this proposal—if one is going to go to all of the effort to harvest and sink the wood, why not use the wood for fuel and not mine and burn the coal?

Mike

[Marty Hoffert]

All:

Regarding the many questions that have come up on crop residue sequestration -- an appealing idea  first proposed by Bob Metzger and Gregory Benford -- please check out our attached comments which appeared in Climatic Change in '02.

Marty Hoffert
Professor Emeritus of Physics       
Andre and Bella Meyer Hall of Physics
Room 525, Mail Code 1026
4 Washington Place       

New York University

New York, NY 10003-6621        
                           
NYU Phone:  212-998-3747       
NYU Fax:     212-995-4016   
Home Phone: 516-466-9418   
Home Fax:    516-487-0734
Cellphone:     516-972-4779
Email:        marty....@nyu.edu     

Web page:  http://www.physics.nyu.edu/people/hoffert.martin.html

At 11:14 AM -0500 2/5/09, Mike MacCracken wrote:

I remain confused about this proposal-if one is going to go to all of the effort to harvest and sink the wood, why not use the wood for fuel and not mine and burn the coal?

[Albert Kallio]

The point of carbon sequestration logging is that in many Arctic regions trees are growing too far from paper factories and mechanical wood processing plants to be of any value to transport away.
 
Furthermore, the paper production is extremely power intensive and increase in paper manufacture will mean increase in emissions as well.  When paper comes to its end of life, the paper containing waste is often sent to incineration plants to be burned when the last bit of carbon is released back to the athomosphere.
 
Therefore, the paper manufacture or mechanical wood processing does not count as a suitable carbon sink. Wood cut for housebuilding and scaffolding is often burned in stove, fire place or even in sauna boiler, this again releases all the carbon stuff back into the air.
 
In the Arctic, there are millions of lakes in Finland alone 187,000, and tens of thousands of kilometers of rivers running into the Arctic Ocean, as well as 20,000 miles of sea shore from the Pacific (the Ohotsk Sea) to the rim of the Arctic Ocean where also carbon sequestered wood stuff can be conviniently dumped.
 
The importance is the proximity of the dump to the site where trees are cut down and new samplings immediately planted. Like humans, the trees do have optimal growth age, after that their growth slows down. The idea is to keep forests growing biomass at their optimal rates and then dumping the stuff in nearby water logged sites.
 
The key question is Jim Hansen versus Mike, I mean, Hansen says it is not enought just to stop digging coal but to reverse. So, just buring wood is not answering this question. Also, the forests that I propose to be considered for carbon sequestration logging are the ones that are in far away places with no markets to consume all that procude.
 
I also think it viable that some coal fired facilities could stay where they are, especially if they are near users, and there is a coal pit nearby. It will also take enormous energy to cut the logs in Siberia and then send them to China to be burned on power station.
 
I hope this clarifies my point why we need intensive carbon sequestration logging to reduce ocean acidification and GHG accummulation in the athmosphere.

Regards,
 
Albert

---

Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:14:01 -0500

Subject: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits and seasides...

From: mmac...@comcast.net
To: albert...@hotmail.com; Geoengi...@googlegroups.com

[Andrew Lockley]

It would be great if you could check the time to sinking of trees in the Arctic, Albert..  It would be a very simple technique, quite cheap and possibly very effective.  I think it's much more likely to work than CROPS because of the size of the trees inhibits decay, as does the cold water.

I am concerned the trees would pose a hazard to shipping.

Would it be possible t fell all year round?  I would have thought that felling deciduous trees in winter would be unwise as their leaves would possibly damage river and sea ecology.

A

2009/2/6 Albert Kallio <albert...@hotmail.com>

3-6 months afloat, can try check for various trees.

---

Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 01:40:35 +0000
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits and seasides...

From: andrew....@gmail.com

To: albert...@hotmail.com

can you clarify if the logs will eventually sink?  how long will it take for this to happen?

A

2009/2/5 Albert Kallio <albert...@hotmail.com>

---

Share your photos with Windows Live Photos – Free Find out more!

[Renaud-KdeR]

Dear All,
Dear Professor Ning ZENG
The ideas developed in your paper can be applied right now.

In France we have right now in between 30 to 50 million m3 of wood
lying on the ground!

Two weeks ago Europe experienced one of the worst windstorms of the
last two centuries (named “Klaus”).
Already in December 26-28, 1999, hurricanes “Martin” and “Lothar” were
called “the centennial ones”. That makes 3 “centennial” hurricanes in
less than 10 years! (“Anatol” which occurred on December 1999 in
northern Europe and “Kyrill” in 2007 in central Europe might be
considered “decennial” ones).

Only in France, hurricanes Martin and Lothar put down 170 million m3
of wood, and much more if you take into account the other countries.
The 1999 windstorms covered more than half of France and extended into
Switzerland and Germany. Between them, these windstorms produced over
$14.4 billion in economic damage, approximately $7.8 billion of which
was insured.
At that time, this ranks as the third largest insurance loss ever,
after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.
Windstorm Lothar alone represents the largest monetary insurance loss
in European history.

As a mater of fact, the economic situation was better in 1999 than
now, but the wood industry was not able to use in buildings or to
convert to energy all the wood available... and most of it 170 million
m3) has been lost (and produced CO2, CH4...).
It will be worst this time, as in 2009 the construction sector is in
crises (specially in Spain) and the stocks are very high and companies
have leveraged, and the financial crises will not help.

So, in my opinion the ideas developed in your paper can be applied
right now and foresters should be allowed to benefit of the CO2 cap-
and-trade systems.
It will be a great opportunity to do research in this topic on a large
geoengineering scale to address all the issues and feedbacks like
methane production and the real sequestration yield and duration.

Regards
Renaud de_RICHTER

On Feb 6, 1:03 pm, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be great if you could check the time to sinking of trees in the
> Arctic, Albert..  It would be a very simple technique, quite cheap and
> possibly very effective.  I think it's much more likely to work than CROPS
> because of the size of the trees inhibits decay, as does the cold water.
> I am concerned the trees would pose a hazard to shipping.
>
> Would it be possible t fell all year round?  I would have thought that
> felling deciduous trees in winter would be unwise as their leaves would
> possibly damage river and sea ecology.
>
> A
>

> 2009/2/6 Albert Kallio <albert_kal...@hotmail.com>

>
>
>
> >  3-6 months afloat, can try check for various trees.
>

> > ------------------------------

> > Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 01:40:35 +0000
> > Subject: Re: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel
> > pits and seasides...

> > From: andrew.lock...@gmail.com
> > To: albert_kal...@hotmail.com

>
> > can you clarify if the logs will eventually sink?  how long will it take
> > for this to happen?
> > A
>

> > 2009/2/5 Albert Kallio <albert_kal...@hotmail.com>

> > ------------------------------

>
> > Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:14:01 -0500
> > Subject: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits
> > and seasides...

> > From: mmacc...@comcast.net
> > To: albert_kal...@hotmail.com; Geoengi...@googlegroups.com

>
> > I remain confused about this proposal—if one is going to go to all of the
> > effort to harvest and sink the wood, why not use the wood for fuel and not
> > mine and burn the coal?
>
> > Mike
>

> > On 2/5/09 4:14 AM, "Albert Kallio" <albert_kal...@hotmail.com<http://hotmail.com/>>

> > wrote:
>
> > Hi,
>
> > The forestry in the Arctic is only cutting what are needed for paper, much
> > of it being recycled.
>
> > Paper decomposes and releases things back rather easily and waste is often
> > burned.
>
> > So conventional forestry does not act as a carbon sink.
>
> > Huge areas of Arctic are never forested and it is these areas where there
> > might be potential.
>
> > Rivers carry water to Arctic Ocean where any logs would sink to sea bed
>
> > Rgs, Albert
>
> > > Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 17:49:26 -0700

> > > From: wig...@ucar.edu <http://ucar.edu/>
> > > To: albert_kal...@hotmail.com <http://hotmail.com/>
> > > CC: andrew.lock...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>; agask...@nc.rr.com<http://nc.rr.com/>;
> > sstr...@u.washington.edu <http://u.washington.edu/>; xbenf...@aol.com<http://aol.com/>;
> > geoengi...@googlegroups.com <http://googlegroups.com/>

> > > > > From: andrew.lock...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>
> > > > > To: agask...@nc.rr.com <http://nc.rr.com/>
> > > > > CC: sstr...@u.washington.edu <http://u.washington.edu/>;
> > xbenf...@aol.com <http://aol.com/>;
> > > > geoengi...@googlegroups.com <http://googlegroups.com/>

>
> > > > > I already suggested methane recovery. Methane from landfills is a
> > > > > rather unreliable technology, and involves significant leakage. You
> > > > > can accelerate production with a 'flushing bioreactor' design, where
> > > > > water is pumped through. However, bearing in mind the fill would be
> > > > > 100pc crop residue, the landfill (plus all the complex layering and
> > > > > piping) would just collapse in a big wet mess - belching out huge
> > > > > amounts of methane into the air as it did.
>
> > > > > Far better to use anaerobic digestion if you wish to recover methane.
> > > > > You can then use this methane for grid gas. I don't know if you use
> > > > > natural gas (methane) in the US but in Europe it's piped to most
> > > > > buildings for heating and cooking.
>
> > > > > A
>

> > > > > 2009/2/4 Alvia Gaskill <agask...@nc.rr.com <http://nc.rr.com/>>:

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Albert Kallio]

There are some harmful side effects from carbon sequestration logging in the Arctic and Subarctic regions and I will answer the few concerns you raised below:

 
"I think it's much more likely to work than CROPS because of the size of the trees inhibits decay, as does the cold water."

 

The dendrologists are often retrieving their old tree rings from the tree trunks that have fallen into lakes and ponds. The logs do not decay for thousands of years and this fact has facilitated the proxi data extraction from sunken trees that have remained water logged in lakes or ponds. Thus there is a good prospect that the logs in lakes will form a permanent storage facility for carbon unless the lake is drained or the logs are removed from their immersion.

 

The lake and pond distribution in remote areas is a plus although their capacity to store wood is not sometimes unlimited like the oceans that can take in infinite quantities of driftwood placed there.  There has to be case-by-case assessment and policy framework to determine where the sinking logs is suitable and where it is not.

 

 

"I am concerned the trees would pose a hazard to shipping."

 

Logs can and will cause hasards for speedboats and water skiiers. Also logs can end up in fishing nets and other traps. The logging operations cannot used rivers upriver on riverbasin that has reservoir for hydroelectric turbines. Large boats in the Arctic and Subarctic must survive winter ice conditions, ice is much heavier and sharper than wood. For ice breakers and ice strengthened all season vessels the logs are not a problem.

 

Small rivers can get logged with tree logs and this can produce hazards for other users if river is a used waterway.

 

 

"Would it be possible t fell all year round?  I would have thought that felling deciduous trees in winter would be unwise as their leaves would possibly damage river and sea ecology."

 

If river transportation is used, the drifting is only available during summer months. The logging yards have to store woods logged during the winter months and dump the logs as soon as the spring floods emerge to make sure that the wood gets far out to the Arctic Ocean as soon as possible so that the wood sinks in deep waters. 

 

For practical reasons only the thick branches would be dumped. It is important to remember that while the logs float much longer the branches sink rapidly as they are much smaller. It might therefore be prudent to dump tree branches into nearby ponds, lakes and water logged marshes while placing the logs themselves to rivers to be transported out to the sea. 

 

The floatation time of the logs is increased if the logs are dried for one or two seasons before dumping them to the river, this will extend their floting time out at the sea making it sure that the drift wood is as widely scattered as possible and as much as possible ends in the deep Arctic Ocean.

 

Each log could be bar coded, this might give some useful data in the future where logs are coming and how they have drifted before their deposition on the Arctic Ocean's sea bed.

 

As only logs are placed into rivers, there is no issue on needles, however, the needles are not toxic any more than other water plants that grow there and die. 

 

Volumetrically speaking, I am more convinced that the water disposal is preferrable to the attempts to fill in old coal mines, gravel or coal pits with carbon sequestration logging.  The key issue is to do it as cheaply and as large quantities as possible where there are few, if any, human activities disturbed by disposal.  The other aspect is to monitoring that the carbon sequestration logging is carried out in such a way that it optimises the fastest period of tree growth in their natural life span to accelerate the carbon removal from the natural tree growth based caption.

 

Faster trees can also used, birch trees have no winter time leaves, these would cool naturally the climate if fir, spruce and pine were replaced by birch or other suitable seasonal trees. However, the growth speed is essential factor in capturing the carbon. Some faster growing Arctic and Subarctic seasonal trees have soft wood that might have a different floating time to spruce and pine.  However, in my view the logging yard operations for drift wood will be able to keep trees for couple of seasons and this dries the logs enabling almost any tree to float as much as possible.

 

It also must be noted that as the Arctic thaws up the rivers capacity to carry water starts earlier and ends later. The disappearing Arctic Ocean sea ice will have a good negative 'feedback' effect, as the less ice there are in the ocean, the more freely and faster the driftwood is carried away from the vicinity of the Arctic river estuaries.  The ice free Arctic Ocean also generates more rain and snow which also creates higher water volumes to flood rivers enabling the river currents be stronger than currently, these swiftly removing the tree logs into the open ocean.

 

So, once in a blue moon, there is a positive impact if the Arctic Ocean sea ice disappears and the permafrost reduces as these facilitate faster drift wood transportation to the sea than has been possible before. But this should be funded by the carbon sequestration contracts and carbon emission trading activities in industrialised countries.

 

It should not be left for the Russian Federation to pick up all the bills for this.

 

 

Preventive Carbon Sequestration Logging in the Dry Amazon Scenario

 

Back in August 2006 I and Matti Lappalainen presented a paper "Preparing the Amazon Ecosystems for the Changing Climate" at World Water Week in Stockholm.  We here proposed a carbon sequestration logging in the Amazon in a hypothetical situation that there were 3-year or longer drought that had killed off the forest. Instead of leaving the dead forest standing vertical, we proposed of clearfelling all dead forest and heaping up all the dead wood material and other plant material in heaps and rows with a large fire breaks created in between.

 

The purpose of the above is to prevent the positive feedback from the dead and soon tinderbox dry forests starting to burn when next thunderstorms pass. This clearfelling severes the required link for the positive feedback 90 Gigatonnes of CO2 if the dead trees are left standing alone and get burned.  Even if fire gets to some clearfelled heaps, the fire breaks will not allow the fire to expand easily and indefinitely given that the dead wood is tightly piled up and major fire breaks created in between.   

 

Before things are in this shape, we proposed, one good measure would be to create a fast response airborne forest fire fighting units and create air strips and fields so that the mobile units can be quickly called where fires range. This helps to avoid CO2 from forest fires and preserves the size of the forest, important against runaway change known as the Amazon dieback - a reduced level of forest that becomes a self-perpetuating forest die back, much alike the melting of the Arctic sea ice near the pole. 

 

Hope this clarifies your questions.

 

Kind regards,

 

Albert.

 

 

---

Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 12:03:55 +0000

Subject: Re: [geo] Re: CROPS paper >> So, lets go boys for the old gravel pits and seasides...
From: andrew....@gmail.com

To: albert...@hotmail.com; geoengi...@googlegroups.com

2009/2/6 Albert Kallio <albert...@hotmail.com>

---

Beyond Hotmail — see what else you can do with Windows Live Find out more!

[Ning Zeng]

Dear Mike, Tom:

These are important zeroth-order questions!

I have not totally convinced myself on the question "why don't we
simply burn the wood to replace fossil fuel". In fact, it seems to me
we could certainly do more co-firing of wood chips with coal (limited
to 10%). On the other hand, the fact that the industry has not
embraced it probably has to do with several factors such as energy
density, pollution (more volatiles than coal per energy),
infrastructure, and cost. As for furniture and building use, their
lifetime is typically no more than 100 years, and the cost is mostly
not in the raw wood but added value, i.e, it would be too expensive to
convert all the available wood into furniture/building material. So
the key for wood burial/storage/submersion is that it can potentially
provide some low cost ways of sequestering carbon.

We estimated that there is a 10GtC/y coarse wood production potential,
compared to 0.9 GtC/y current human usage, so there is a lot of extra
capacity to utilize should we need to return CO2 to a low-enough level
at one point (. Of course, various constraints will set practical
limit on really how much can be used. Perhaps the easiest and cheapest
methods to start with are where you get co-benefits such as: bury/
store deforested wood rather than burning; bury some potential fuel on
the forest floor to reduce fire danger; bury/store the dead wood blown
down by storms (per Renaud de_RICHTER's note; Katrina probably did
more damage) or insect outbreaks (I am thinking of the dying pines in
the America West). There is more discussion in this paper (http://
www.cbmjournal.com/content/3/1/1) which also lacks the answers to a
lot of questions. Feedbacks/ideas will be appreciated.

cheers,
-Ning
--
Ning Zeng, Associate Professor
Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and
Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Phone: (301)
405-5377
University of Maryland Fax: (301) 314-9482
2417 Computer and Space Sciences Building Email:
ze...@atmos.umd.edu
College Park, MD 20742-2425, USA http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~zeng