7 ms·

How to bury carbon? Let plants do the dirty work

77 points by dnetesn 4y ago

gardenfelder 4y ago
Regenerative Agriculture [1] seems to be emerging as a powerful way to use soil and plants to sequester carbon [1] https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agriculture/ https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agric...
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Yes I hope so! I am co-creating an open source solar powered farming robot specifically intended to be used in a regenerative organic system. Check it out! https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simulation-brakes-funding-and-navigation-improvements/202 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu...
  - vinibrito 4y ago
    Hopefully one day I will be able to contribute to it!
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Yes that would be lovely! We and everyone in the community would appreciate that. I hope we can make it a machine people can really rely on.
tmitchel2 4y ago
Offset enough carbon from deeply buried fossil fuel by capturing it and spreading it in a thin layer over farm land, what could go wrong.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
To give a quick primer to people who would be tempted to only comment on the title, the issue with using plants for carbon sequestration is that they are a temporary sink. Plants use the atmosphere carbon to grow and that carbon is then released when the plants die and is decomposed. So if you want to sequester more carbon than currently you need to either: have more plants or slow down plants decomposition. Multiple ways exist to do that. Reforestation is one. A promising one is to farm algae which grow quite fast and either bury them in arid places, deeply submerge them or use them to recreate peat bogs. Another one is to augment the amount of decaying organic matter in the soil. This can be achieved either through change to how we farm or the article presents a project to use GMO crops with roots engineered for mass and slow decay. The field is both promising and fascinating. It’s probably never going to be a panacea but everything that helps should be investigated.
- lalos 4y ago
  That’s how oil was made but with longer time frames.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    Plot twist: What we know as oil was buried by a former civilisation that fought climate change then went extinct. The trees we bury will be used as fossil fuels by the next civilisation.
  - gumby 4y ago
    I like to joke that oil is a renewable energy source, it's just that people tend to be too impatient.
    - elihu 4y ago
      If I understand right, most of our current fossil fuels are from an era when there weren't bacteria capable of breaking down lignin. So, plants would die and dry out, but wouldn't fully decompose. You'd have huge mounds of dead plants that would eventually get buried and turn into oil. Those conditions don't exist anymore, so they're actually a non-renewable resource.
      - glandium 4y ago
        I feel like even if the conditions existed, humans would be preventing them from happening. Or is it what you were implying?
        elihu 4y ago
        No, I mean that the conditions can't happen anymore the way they did then, because in the intervening time microbes have evolved that can eat lignin. The dead plants would be almost entirely decomposed before they have a chance to get buried.
      - MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
hammock 4y ago
Why are we talking about ferns and duckweed? It is the same reason wildlife conservation efforts tend to involve talking about the "charismatic megafauna"? We would do well to remember that a full 70% of plant-based carbon sequestration takes place in the ocean (you know, 70% of Earth's surface), not inland, and is done by phytoplankton.
- elihu 4y ago
  I think all these approaches should be looked at. It's not obvious to me that farming algae to sequester carbon would be cheaper/easier per ton of CO2 removed than farming duckweed or azolla.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  This doesn’t necessarily ignore or exclude utilizing the ocean, though. We should be aiming to do both. The ocean is harder to control - at least with inland controlled experiments we can get a sense of what’s possible and how it can scale. With the ocean it seems our goal would be to simply let it do what it does best, and stop getting in its way. They seem like different endeavours.
baking 4y ago
Eli Yablonovitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-KEdmG-WU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-KEdmG-WU His conclusion is to bury fast-growing high lignin crops in clay lined landfills. Carbohydrates do breakdown into CO2 over time.
kornhole 4y ago
I maintain a large garden and bury probably tons of organic matter underneath and in the beds. It is a pittance of carbon capture and no solution. Here is a fun video about carbon capture. https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8 https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you can bury tonnes personally on the order of years then you're operating on a scale where it can contribute to undoing the harm providing we solve the cause of the problem first. If regenerating all the devestated agricultural land can sequester a hundred billion tonnes, then that makes for 10 or 20% less total to remove.
akeck 4y ago
I've always wanted to try the following process (hopefully powered by solar): fast growing plant (hemp? bamboo?) -> charcoal -> plasma -> diamond
mikewarot 4y ago
You could also look into "regenerative agriculture" which also builds topsoil by capturing huge amounts of carbon, increases water retention, and nearly eliminates the use of industrial inputs like pesticides. The fundamentals are, NEVER till the land, always have a cover crop, manage it carefully, and graze animals on it in a well managed manner.
betwixthewires 4y ago
One way to do it is to produce more bioavailable nitrogen to encourage more plant growth, then have animals and humans eat the plants. Now the carbon is stuck in the animals. As long as those animal populations remain constant or grow you have a good carbon sink. You can even use the animals for food, as long as the animals never decompose it's fine. Or another one, as we move to renewable fuels, we might just have a cycle that traps a significant portion of the carbon dioxide in the fuel between use and creation, so the added carbon would be part of it's own separate cycle, and we could keep using it for energy storage ad infinitum. Why bury it? We can use it. As long as it's utility is high, we would only wind up with a slightly higher co2 concentration than baseline. If we bury it, then we have to take co2 from the natural carbon cycle that the biosphere needs to store energy, which means reduced biomass. But if we create a secondary carbon cycle for energy and food that only interacts with the natural one in the air we can store energy and food without impacting the biosphere as much.
wodenokoto 4y ago
A long time ago I read an article about burying plant materials. Haven’t heard about it since, but it makes sense to me. Especially because many types of farming burns leftover bits of crops that can’t be used. Just bury it and you have sequestered carbon. “Back to whence it came!”
- timbit42 4y ago
  The carbon in plants comes from the air, not the soil. Source: Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE
kristianp 4y ago
That's a poor layout on mobile. There's an average of less than 5 words per line.
pvaldes 4y ago
Burning more soil and wood in wildfires should be heavily frowned upon at least, and prosecuted.
dxs 4y ago
This is already in progress, in North Dakota. See Gabe Brown, and his book on this and related subjects, "Dirt to Soil". Some other resources... > Brown's Ranch – Regenerating Landscapes for a Sustainable Future: https://brownsranch.us/ https://brownsranch.us/ > Brown’s Ranch, Bismarck, ND: https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-brown.shtml https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-... > Gabe Brown’s Most Profitable Crop & Understanding Regenerative Agriculture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVH01bnD0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVH01bnD0U (The book is available via z-lib.org as a last resort.)

77 points by dnetesn 4y ago

Regenerative Agriculture [1] seems to be emerging as a powerful way to use soil and plants to sequester carbon [1] https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agriculture/ https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agric...

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Yes I hope so! I am co-creating an open source solar powered farming robot specifically intended to be used in a regenerative organic system. Check it out! https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simulation-brakes-funding-and-navigation-improvements/202 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu...
- vinibrito 4y ago
  Hopefully one day I will be able to contribute to it!
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Yes that would be lovely! We and everyone in the community would appreciate that. I hope we can make it a machine people can really rely on.

tmitchel2 4y ago

Offset enough carbon from deeply buried fossil fuel by capturing it and spreading it in a thin layer over farm land, what could go wrong.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

To give a quick primer to people who would be tempted to only comment on the title, the issue with using plants for carbon sequestration is that they are a temporary sink. Plants use the atmosphere carbon to grow and that carbon is then released when the plants die and is decomposed. So if you want to sequester more carbon than currently you need to either: have more plants or slow down plants decomposition. Multiple ways exist to do that. Reforestation is one. A promising one is to farm algae which grow quite fast and either bury them in arid places, deeply submerge them or use them to recreate peat bogs. Another one is to augment the amount of decaying organic matter in the soil. This can be achieved either through change to how we farm or the article presents a project to use GMO crops with roots engineered for mass and slow decay. The field is both promising and fascinating. It’s probably never going to be a panacea but everything that helps should be investigated.

lalos 4y ago
That’s how oil was made but with longer time frames.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  Plot twist: What we know as oil was buried by a former civilisation that fought climate change then went extinct. The trees we bury will be used as fossil fuels by the next civilisation.
- gumby 4y ago
  I like to joke that oil is a renewable energy source, it's just that people tend to be too impatient.
  - elihu 4y ago
    If I understand right, most of our current fossil fuels are from an era when there weren't bacteria capable of breaking down lignin. So, plants would die and dry out, but wouldn't fully decompose. You'd have huge mounds of dead plants that would eventually get buried and turn into oil. Those conditions don't exist anymore, so they're actually a non-renewable resource.
    - glandium 4y ago
      I feel like even if the conditions existed, humans would be preventing them from happening. Or is it what you were implying?
      - elihu 4y ago
        No, I mean that the conditions can't happen anymore the way they did then, because in the intervening time microbes have evolved that can eat lignin. The dead plants would be almost entirely decomposed before they have a chance to get buried.
    - MathMonkeyMan 4y ago

hammock 4y ago

Why are we talking about ferns and duckweed? It is the same reason wildlife conservation efforts tend to involve talking about the "charismatic megafauna"? We would do well to remember that a full 70% of plant-based carbon sequestration takes place in the ocean (you know, 70% of Earth's surface), not inland, and is done by phytoplankton.

elihu 4y ago
I think all these approaches should be looked at. It's not obvious to me that farming algae to sequester carbon would be cheaper/easier per ton of CO2 removed than farming duckweed or azolla.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
This doesn’t necessarily ignore or exclude utilizing the ocean, though. We should be aiming to do both. The ocean is harder to control - at least with inland controlled experiments we can get a sense of what’s possible and how it can scale. With the ocean it seems our goal would be to simply let it do what it does best, and stop getting in its way. They seem like different endeavours.

baking 4y ago

Eli Yablonovitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-KEdmG-WU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-KEdmG-WU His conclusion is to bury fast-growing high lignin crops in clay lined landfills. Carbohydrates do breakdown into CO2 over time.

kornhole 4y ago

I maintain a large garden and bury probably tons of organic matter underneath and in the beds. It is a pittance of carbon capture and no solution. Here is a fun video about carbon capture. https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8 https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8

Schroedingersat 4y ago
If you can bury tonnes personally on the order of years then you're operating on a scale where it can contribute to undoing the harm providing we solve the cause of the problem first. If regenerating all the devestated agricultural land can sequester a hundred billion tonnes, then that makes for 10 or 20% less total to remove.

akeck 4y ago

I've always wanted to try the following process (hopefully powered by solar): fast growing plant (hemp? bamboo?) -> charcoal -> plasma -> diamond

mikewarot 4y ago

You could also look into "regenerative agriculture" which also builds topsoil by capturing huge amounts of carbon, increases water retention, and nearly eliminates the use of industrial inputs like pesticides. The fundamentals are, NEVER till the land, always have a cover crop, manage it carefully, and graze animals on it in a well managed manner.

betwixthewires 4y ago

One way to do it is to produce more bioavailable nitrogen to encourage more plant growth, then have animals and humans eat the plants. Now the carbon is stuck in the animals. As long as those animal populations remain constant or grow you have a good carbon sink. You can even use the animals for food, as long as the animals never decompose it's fine. Or another one, as we move to renewable fuels, we might just have a cycle that traps a significant portion of the carbon dioxide in the fuel between use and creation, so the added carbon would be part of it's own separate cycle, and we could keep using it for energy storage ad infinitum. Why bury it? We can use it. As long as it's utility is high, we would only wind up with a slightly higher co2 concentration than baseline. If we bury it, then we have to take co2 from the natural carbon cycle that the biosphere needs to store energy, which means reduced biomass. But if we create a secondary carbon cycle for energy and food that only interacts with the natural one in the air we can store energy and food without impacting the biosphere as much.

wodenokoto 4y ago

A long time ago I read an article about burying plant materials. Haven’t heard about it since, but it makes sense to me. Especially because many types of farming burns leftover bits of crops that can’t be used. Just bury it and you have sequestered carbon. “Back to whence it came!”

timbit42 4y ago
The carbon in plants comes from the air, not the soil. Source: Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE

kristianp 4y ago

That's a poor layout on mobile. There's an average of less than 5 words per line.

pvaldes 4y ago

Burning more soil and wood in wildfires should be heavily frowned upon at least, and prosecuted.

dxs 4y ago

This is already in progress, in North Dakota. See Gabe Brown, and his book on this and related subjects, "Dirt to Soil". Some other resources... > Brown's Ranch – Regenerating Landscapes for a Sustainable Future: https://brownsranch.us/ https://brownsranch.us/ > Brown’s Ranch, Bismarck, ND: https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-brown.shtml https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-... > Gabe Brown’s Most Profitable Crop & Understanding Regenerative Agriculture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVH01bnD0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVH01bnD0U (The book is available via z-lib.org as a last resort.)