I will ask Dr Wardle also to contact Gristmill to explain that his teams findings were described wrongly in the press release.

And I will ask Dr Steiner and Prof Lehmann to have post here too.

Watch this space.

May I ask JMG to read the article instead of the press release, and then think things true?

You will see that the findings do in no way diminish the potential of biochar.

The point is very simple: biochar is not meant for use in already humus-rich soils. The entire point is to use it in SOM-poor soils!

Oh no, yet another press release and interpretation that gets it quite wrong!

Jonas was an admin from over at Biopact.  A website devoted to promoting biofuels.

Biopact closed down, to instead pursue a targeted biochar project.

Jonas has since insisted that biochar is the "only carbon negative" energy source available.

Jonas would not like it if biochar proved to not be a solution to dealing with global warming. (Much less if it made things worse.)

Without some benefit to the recipient land user, it is doubtful that carbon sequestration alone will be able to generate much of a following for charcoal as a soil amendment. This added value is needed to persuade the diversion of  charcoal from its competing use as a fuel. Improved soil health, as measured by soil microbial performance, is a tangible benefit.  

The forest humus study soundly answers the camp that argues that charcoal, because it doesn't participate in biogeochemical cycling, cannot, in and of itself be expected to add to soil vitality.  We needed a ten year study to shatter this simplistic assumption. To paraphrase an old aftershave advertisement: Thanks! We needed that!

In fact, if I may be so humble, we were the only blog of note to do so - luckily, the concept of carbon-negative bioenergy is now gaining wider attention: e.g. by Nasa's James Hansen, whose team will soon publish a key paper recommending it as one of the key tools to combat dangerous climate change.

Amongst the other strategies mentioned by Hansen are... indeed, biochar and the establishment of other types of carbon sinks.

The paper does not mention any other renewables (wind, solar, hydro) because they can never withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere - these technologies remain carbon-positive and add CO2 to the atmosphere. (Greyfalcon is right: Biopact's often mentioned carbon-negative energy strategies are the only carbon-negative energy concepts.)

Let me quote the Hansen team's abstract and the crucial paragraph:

Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

James Hansen1*,a,b, Makiko Satoa,b, Pushker Kharechaa,b, David Beerlingc, Robert Bernerd,
Valerie Masson-Delmottee, Mark Paganid, Maureen Raymof, Dana L. Royerg and James C. Zachosh

-a. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA
-b. Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10027, USA
-c. Dept. Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
-d. Dept. Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA
-e. Lab. des Sciences du Climat et l'Environnement/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, CEA-CNRS-Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, CE Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
-f. Dept. Earth Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
-g. Dept. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459-0139, USA
-h. Earth & Planetary Sciences Dept., University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA

Abstract: Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6°C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 425±75 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

Description of what to do to draw CO2 from the atmosphere - needed to tackle dangerous climate change.

4.ANTHROPOCENE ERA

4.1. Tipping points

4.2. Target CO2

4.3. CO2 scenarios

4.4. Policy relevance

    Desire to reduce airborne CO2 raises the question of whether CO2 could be drawn from the air artificially. There are no large-scale technologies for CO2 air capture now, but with strong research and development support and industrial-scale pilot projects sustained over decades it may be possible to achieve costs ~$200/tC [81] or perhaps less [82].  At $100/tC, the cost of removing 50 ppm of CO2 is ~$10 trillion.
    Improved agricultural and forestry practices offer a more natural way to draw down CO2. Deforestation contributed a net emission of 60±30 ppm over the past few hundred years, of which ~20 ppm CO2 remains in the air today [2, 83, Figs S12, S14] [note: in a slash-and-char scenario at the tropical forest frontier, biochar reduces deforestation]. Reforestation could absorb a substantial fraction of the 60±30 ppm net deforestation emission.
    Carbon sequestration in soil also has significant potential.  Biochar, produced in pyrolysis of residues from crops, forestry, and animal wastes, can be used to restore soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to millennia [84]. Biochar helps soil retain nutrients and fertilizers, reducing emissions of GHGs such as N2O [85]. Replacing slash-and-burn agriculture with slash-and-char and use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar production could provide a CO2 drawdown of ~8 ppm or more in half a century [85].
    In the Appendix we define a forest/soil drawdown scenario that reaches 50 ppm by 2150 (Fig. 6b). This scenario returns CO2 below 350 ppm late this century, after about 100 years above that level.

[The concept often described by Biopact - the only source to do so in-depth]    More rapid drawdown could be provided by CO2 capture at power plants fueled by gas and biofuels [86]. Low-input high-diversity biofuels grown on degraded or marginal lands, with associated biochar production, could accelerate CO2 drawdown, but the nature of a biofuel approach must be carefully designed [85, 87-89].
    A rising price on carbon emissions and payment for carbon sequestration is surely needed to make drawdown of airborne CO2 a reality.  A 50 ppm drawdown via agricultural and forestry practices seems plausible. But if most of the CO2 in coal is put into the air, no such "natural" drawdown of CO2 to 350 ppm is feasible. Indeed, if the world continues on a business-as-usual path for even another decade without initiating phase-out of unconstrained coal use, prospects for avoiding a dangerously large, extended overshoot of the 350 ppm level will be dim.

I think it's important that carbon-negative energy (which is obviously always based on biomass) is finally being recognized.

All we, over at Biopact, have said is that of the different strategies, biochar is probably one of the most feasible, socially and economically speaking - most notably so because it results in benefits for local farming communities, which is not the case for the idea of burning biomass in CCS-power plants, because that requires a centralist logic and a concentration of power; the latter strategy is also quite expensive. Biochar is more elegant in that it can be organised in a decentralised manner, on a very large scale independent of central power stations, and may contribute to improved food production amongst the poorest farmers; it is also less costly [see the Lehmann projections, and a summary of cost-estimates at the International Biochar Initiative].

Secondly, I'm not personally involved in the biochar project, but I do think it's interesting.

Thirdly, I invite you to visit the Terra Preta mailing list, so you can see what the real implications of professor Wardle's important research findings are for biochar.

Professor Wardle himself has participated in the discussion:
Terra Preta Mailing List.

Alternatively, you may want to check the concept as it is being explored by the Biochar Fund, where you can see that prof Wardle's findings have not that much relevance to biochar (since biochar is used in nutrient-deficient soils with low SOM-contents, at the tropical forest frontier, slowing deforestation and improving crop yields - the whole point of biochar. Using biochar in humus-rich soils like those of a Swedish forest is the exact contrary).

Biochar Fund.

Best, Jonas

(you have to be a subscriber to read the full text though)

  Biogas (from manure, garbage, and biomass waste) still offsets 20 times the effective GHG that it emits when burned.

And produces organic fertilizer.  If 5% of our energy came from biogas from these sources (which otherwise cause huge methane release) the other 95% of GHG from the other sources would be offset.

Hard to believe?  Yep.  But on the other hand, I have tried to disprove it.  It seems to be simple chemistry.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

See also: C/N ratio, http://compost.css.cornell.edu/calc/cn_ratio.html

So, the right use of "agrichar" would be to first soak it with nutritients (e.g. manure, or e.g. use it in a hominid carbon pissoir) and only then add it to the soil.

And so, I do not mix the carcoal into my compost, but put it under the heap. (I use big-chunk barbeque char there, mainly for aeration and fending off tree roots. (Later use in garden is a longer story.))

Soak the charcoal in organic fertilizer, from your compost in your case, or in the case of large scale organic ag, soak the charcoal in organic fertilizer from biodigestors.

Maybe soaking wood chips in the biodigestor, as is done now on dairy farms, would be better, given the failure of biochar.  Dairy biogas operations use wood chips for cow bedding, then the whole mess is put in the digestor.  The wood chips partially digest and soften, then they are reclaimed and recycled into bedding again.

These could be used as organic soil amendment too.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Using bbq char made from living hardwood trees, as I presently do for lack of other char, is of course BS...

But there are those vast masses of decaying trees killed by the pine/bark beetle (e.g. in Canada). These should be charred. But how to make dust of the big chunks? (I mean, imagine I'm a low tech c21st small farmer, bancrupt ex U.S. middle class, with no industrial equipment). So, perhaps let them cows do the work: Trample the chunks to dust plus add the nutritients?

I think biochar shows a lot of promise, as do other appropriate technologies for improving the soil and crop yields.

Good discussion. I was suprised that the tests were being conducted in the Swedish forests, since as I understood it, the Terra Preta techniques were developed in the tropics for their characteristic soils.

A problem when we're talking about things like biochar is our modern assumptions: we assume that technologies are simple, that they can be plugged in anywhere and are either a huge success or are fatally flawed. That sort of thinking doesn't work well with agriculture or biological systems, which are complex and varied.  ("Always a lot of 'buts'," says one plant specialist).  

About biochar in the media. It would be helpful to have press releases or postings to help put scientific studies like this in perspective.

Bart
Energy Bulletin