Dear all,

 

Since I registered my Greening Method, I learned (hard way) that I was grossly understating how much our habits drive our thoughts and actions. Despite reasoning being known for years now, Scientific American managed to put a big question mark over the first part of its name. Its special issue Earth 3.0 was the last place I would expect to find hard imprinted habitual thoughts.

I have expressed my disappointment to the editors, but I have not received a reply. And I’m not surprised when I consider the scope of their blunder. I have, therefore, revisited the topic. Feel free to forward this post to whoever might be interested. It is time to offer PhDs and some “names” a habit breaking exercise.

Kind regards,

Damir

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Global Warming

 

To reduce epileptic seizures some patients had to have halves of their brain halves surgically disconnected. And, what right eye saw was now known only to the left half of the brain and vice versa. In an experiment, these patients were shown pairs of unrelated pictures – picture of chicken to the left eye only, for example, and picture of shovel to the right eye only. Then they were asked to select two of the objects (toys) that represented what they saw. They always choose correctly, but when asked why, all answers where in style: “You need shovel to clean up the chicken shed.”

Of course, we do not have our brains split and we will not give answers full of chicken and shovels, shall we? Hmm, when it comes to global warming I’m not so sure. Let us consider few…

Clean Coal

Clean coal is a technology in development that aims to compress carbon dioxide and safely store it underground. Supposedly there are plenty of potential safe storages and this could be a long term solution for our growing carbon dioxide emissions. According to some, the technology could be available on industrial scales in ten to fifteen years.

Unfortunately, there are chickens and shovels in this solution. The first one is that the most of major pilot projects, I know of, have been abandoned on safety grounds. It is hard to guarantee that there will not be a tectonic shift that can release the gas killing instantly all life around.

But imagine that we could safely store all carbon dioxide we emit underground. For this chicken/shovel we need a bit of elementary chemistry. Guess what – carbon dioxide is made of one atom of carbon and two atoms of – oxygen. With the less of a tonne of carbon (approximately a tonne of coal we burn) we would bury more than two tonnes of oxygen. And we need oxygen to breathe.

As we, and the rest of breathing life, choke with such “solution” we will hit our planet with even more chickens and shovels. Burning coal and use of energy will further heat our planet, raising vapour levels in our atmosphere. And vapour is even more potent greenhouse gas. Without our polar caps, much less of the heat will be emitted back into outer space. Vicious circle, isn’t it? And we provide our policymakers with such, “expert” opinions…

Fuel or Food Dilemma

Ethanol industry raised a lot of criticisms for using land to produce fuel. Food prices skyrocketed and debates still rage. One reputable magazine eroded its reputation by repeating them and adding a big catch-22 article: “Water vs. Energy”. Certainly, we do not have chickens and shovels here, do we?

Unfortunately, chickens and shovels are here – hidden in ambiguities. The first one is in assumption that we need arable land to grow organic matter for biofuels. And the second one is in assumption that we need fresh water to grow organic matter for biofuels.

The idea has been around for few decades now, but it never reached ears of those that count. It never reached politicians, their advisors or coal industry, for example. And we do have algae we can grow on barren land in seawater basins or ponds. And we do have plenty of seawater and barren land exposed to the sun.

Apart from rapid capture of carbon (from carbon dioxide) and release of oxygen, algae also offer organic matter for food, feed or fertiliser production. And, as a sweetener, they show great potential for biofuels production. In some cases, a coal powered plant could surround itself with enough algae to absorb its entire carbon dioxide output. Such coal plants could be converted to be powered by algae – becoming, in effect, solar plants. And all this could be much cheaper than burying carbon dioxide underground…

However, soaking up current pollution is only a partial solution. Temperatures will continue to grow simply because there is already too much carbon dioxide and vapour in atmosphere.

Global Problem

The word “global” in “global warming” tells us that it is a global problem that needs global solutions. And yet, we are talking about electric cars etc. Imagine what a farmer in Kenya will do with an electric bike in a village that does not even have electricity. To introduce electric cars in Kenya, we will need to get electricity in every village. And not only this, the whole new generation of mechanics would need to be educated, for example. And costs will grow and grow…

The irony is that complexity of our high tech solutions will prevent global response to global warming. And “solutions” like clean coal are likely to end up in tragedies in developing countries where safety is a minor issue.

For truly global response we need attractive and feasible low tech solutions. And we need to implement these low tech solutions on massive scales and on very large areas of our planet. Except for afforestation, I haven’t heard of many other, feasible low tech solutions. And even these proposals are stuck because off “forests or food” dilemmas…

And who to implement these low tech solutions? Professionals that occupy the most of planet’s surface per capita – farmers.

Global Solution

Apart from direct benefits, cultivating seawater algae over barren land has interesting side effects – side effects Greening Method (patent pending) takes full advantage of.

Seawater in basins and ponds will evaporate – fresh water. The increased humidity above barren land will reduce humidity loss from the soil. And only this could be enough, in some cases, for sparse vegetation to take hold – what was barren land will start to turn into fertile.

Algae themselves are very good fertiliser and – “desalination plants”. Freshly harvested kelp thrown over barren land will, therefore, not only fertilise but also water the soil. With few harvests like this many lands that were considered as barren can turn fertile enough to start growing a new agroforestry mix.

Growing new forests will not only capture more carbon dioxide and release oxygen. New forests will also have other beneficial side effects. The first one is that forests will induce vertical air circulation and the second one is that they will reduce chances of wild weather occurrences.

Vertical air circulation is important because it fosters cloud formation out of vapour in our atmosphere. With a bit of microclimate planning, we could encourage these clouds to release rains where we need them the most.

Future

Since we started to use fire, we emitted carbon dioxide into the air we breathe. Stone Age farmers may have even averted a minor ice age through deforestation and fires – as some data suggest. However, with industrial revolution we tapped deeply into nature’s safe storages for carbon – safe storages the nature was creating since the beginning of the life on this planet. And the whole life on this planet depends on safety of these storages. We have opened Pandora’s Box…

We will need all of our wits to get ourselves out of this trouble. And we can do this and transform the whole of our planet in progress. But we also need to learn a lesson. We need to learn that our planet is not for us, humans, to use and abuse. We need to learn to become custodians of our planet and of all the life on it.