From Greenwire/ NYT By Paul Voosen of Greenwire Published: September 7th, 2010
…Inspired by ancient Amazonian soils, researchers have found that buried charcoal resists bacteria’s attempts to break it down. And thanks to its porous geometry, it has a knack for improving land in ways still being revealed.
“Once we get serious about climate change, this information is available now,” said James Amonette, an environmental geochemist at the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “[Biochar] is one of the major tools we can use to fight climate change, if we decide to do so.”
Charcoal’s status may be comparable to the start of the world’s head-over-heels embrace of synthetic fertilizer a century ago, scientists say. As piling evidence shows, converting organic matter — be it corn scraps, human sewage or chicken litter — to charcoal can, in effect, increase the carbon cycle’s latency by hundreds of years, buying humanity just a bit more time to solve its fossil fuel fix.
While it has roots in decades-old research, the biochar movement took life only recently, as soil scientists realized the scope of charcoal’s climate implications. The field, rich in unanswered questions, has exploded in the past five years, leading several hundred scientists to gather this month in Brazil for the world’s third annual biochar conference.
“Biochar is certainly not a fringe science anymore,” said Lukas van Zweiten, an Australian researcher running one of the world’s largest biochar field trials. (Read the whole story)
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