The Ottawa Citizen has a story this morning about multibillionaire Bill Gates and his funding of projects that are aimed at controlling the Earth’s climate in the face of rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the resulting warming of the biosphere. I won’t go into too much detail, except to say that University of Calgary scientists David Keith is among a small group of researchers who are advising Gates and receiving funding from the Microsoft co-founder. Controversy has no doubt followed. The scientists involved say don’t worry, our work is only confined to the lab. But critics of geoengineering — and I would include myself in that group — are concerned that what grows in the lab will be applied to the atmosphere without meaningful public debate about the risks. Already, there is a plan — called the Silver Lining Projects – to test out the whitening of clouds over a 10,000-square-kilometre patch of the Pacific Ocean. The idea is that this would increase their ability to reflect sunlight back out to space before it gets a chance to heat the Earth’s surface.

To me, the first phrase that pops into my mind is “Beware the law of unintended consequences.” I believe Gaia theorist James Lovelock expressed the risks best in a commentary last September in The Guardian U.K.: (more…)

During a recent round-table session I attended with British scientist and Gaia author James Lovelock, it was easy to walk away feeling helpless about the climate problems humanity faces. But when pressed, Lovelock said he does believe there’s potential in “biochar” — that is, converting some of the world’s biomass (e.g. forest slash, agricultural residues, fast-growing grasses grown on depleted soils, farmed algae) into charcoal and sequestering the black mass in soil or under the ocean. This is done through a process called pyrolysis, which when creating the charcoal locks in about 60 per cent of the biomass’s carbon. Charcoal stays inert and chemically stable for hundreds of years. Best to turn some of the world’s biomass into charcoal instead of letting the biomass rot and release methane into the atmosphere. At least that’s the thinking.

In the end, it’s the rough equivalent of making coal, but doing it in a few hours instead of a million or so years. It’s considered better — and likely cheaper — than the capture and sequestering of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions because it doesn’t just avoid the release of emissions; so-called charcoal sequestration can lead to the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. This makes it carbon negative. Turning some of the biomass into charcoal prevents new emissions, but the new generation of biomass that grows also absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. Over time, the cycle of charring biomass and growing new biomass can act like a big global carbon vacuum.

The trick is doing it on a large enough scale to matter. EnCana researcher Subodh Gupta, a big believer in charcoal sequestration, recently argued at the Canadian International Petroleum Conference in Calgary that the best way to demonstrate that the approach works is to start with the organics and even some plastics collected from municipal solid waste. It solves many problems. (more…)

UPDATE: As promised, here’s the Lovelock Q&A from Saturday’s Toronto Star.

If you’d like to hear from the man who developed the Gaia theory, James Lovelock will be speaking in Toronto on the morning of May 26 at the Glenn Gould Studio, CBC headquarters building, 250 Front St. West. The event is organized by Corporate Knights magazine, and you can click here for details. Lovelock recently released his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, and his outlook on the world isn’t pretty. I had a chance to interview Lovelock last week and the Q&A will be appearing in this Saturday’s Toronto Star. He’s a delightful man, turning 90 in July, but his message regarding the impact of climate change on humanity is quite alarming, and depressing. I’ll link to the Q&A when it appears on Saturday. If you’re interested in checking out his talk, word is there are still a few tickets available.