songbird wrote:
we have wandered far afield,
but i'm going to return and ask
about the two calorie output vs
one Billy pulled out of ?


I would be interested to see that too.

and the other question for
Billy is how does organic
gardening sequester carbon
dioxide?

I am guessing that in the long term organic horticulture has only a mild
effect in storage. If you have 10% organic material in your soil you are
sequestering more carbon than if you have 1% but it isn't going to be a big
carbon sink. Assuming that you can still feed the numbers required. OTOH
if you don't use all the chemferts that require energy to manufacture then
you are saving some at that end.

improving soil is
good, mixing organic stuff in
and making all the various
critters happy is great, but
that is nutrient cycling not
carbon sequestration... we
need carbon sequestration
at this point. can we get
that via organic gardening
methods at present?


This can only be answered properly by careful numeric modelling but I don't
have a reference for it. My guess is that it won't be so valuable. However
if combined with other methods such as forest re-planting and organic
pasture management we might make some progress. Regarding the latter, I
have seen studies that say that pastures (as opposed to crops) can store
significant carbon. To do this you need to grass-feed your animals instead
of ripping out the pastures to grow corn to feed them in lots.

i really need to study
charcoal production methods...
perhaps a solar oven could
do it... gotta go look now.



I think that this would be possible but the big question is what would be
the energy cost and financial cost to do it.

Regardless of sequestration there is no mid-term solution unless we stop
burning fossil fuel at such a rate. We must decide to do this as a species,
the limits of availability will make the decision for us in respect of oil
quite soon but there is enough coal left to send earth well into the
greenhouse if we keep burning it at an increasing rate. And only one
long-term solution: stop population growth.

David