biochar

Biochar remains promising

by Bryan Walker August 18, 2011

A recent commenter on Hot Topic made critical reference to biochar, providing links to publications from Biofuelwatch. Since I have written posts in the past highlighting the favourable possibilities which biochar may offer I thought it was perhaps time to revisit the matter. Biofuelwatch is an organisation which works “to raise awareness of the negative [...]

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The Climate Show #10: David Suzuki survives tech meltdown

by Gareth March 31, 2011

Meltdown in the treacle factory (Glenn’s PC) means that episode 10 of everybody’s favourite Climate Show is only available in full by podcast. We’ve resurrected the video of our interview with David Suzuki, the great Canadian environmentalist and campaigner (above), but for the full goodness — a great climate change graphic, Russian heatwave analysis, thoughts [...]

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Fixing the Sky

by Bryan Walker October 8, 2010

The notion that if it comes to the worst in climate change we can fall back on geoengineering  receives little credence in James Rodger Fleming’s new book Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate control. Fleming is a science historian and in the claims of some of today’s would-be climate engineers he [...]

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Biochar: looking better all the time

by Bryan Walker August 5, 2010

Interesting biochar research is reported in a news release from the American Society of Agronomy.  An Australian research team has been testing the effects of biochar on nitrous oxide emission and nitrogen leaching from two different soil varieties. Their results are reported (no charge for this month) in the Journal of Environmental Quality. The study [...]

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Carbonscape and the new Victorians

by Bryan Walker January 2, 2010

Buried among the emails which accumulated while I was in hospital was one from Carbonscape, the NZ company working on biochar, drawing my attention to an article in the UK Sunday Times. It missed proper attention until I tidied up my inbox yesterday, but even a few weeks late I think it’s worth reporting, especially [...]

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Carbonscape update

by Bryan Walker April 16, 2009

As we mentioned in a recent post New Zealand company Carbonscape was shortlisted in the Financial Times competition to find the most innovative solution to the effects of climate change. It went into the final as judges’ favourite, but the nearly 15,000 visitors to the website chose another entry, the Kyoto Box from Kenya, a [...]

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Blenheim biochar gets global attention

by Bryan Walker March 19, 2009

Carbonscape, the New Zealand company working on making charcoal from a microwaving process discussed here and here on Hot Topic, has just announced that they are one of only five companies to make the shortlist in a global competition, the Financial Times’ Climate Change Challenge. The competition seeks the most innovative solution to the effects [...]

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Climate Code Red

by Bryan Walker February 28, 2009

This week I watched a short video clip of climatologist James Hansen inviting people to join an act of civil disobedience on March 2 at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC which  powers Congress with coal-based energy. In his laid-back but serious way he remarks it is hard to realise that climate change is [...]

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Someone took the words away

by Gareth February 12, 2009

Done and dusted. My submission to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review has been safely committed to the tender mercies of NZ Post. It’s a bit long to be posted in full — it’s over 3,500 words (there’s a PDF of the full document here), but I will run through the main recommendations I make. Because [...]

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The boatman’s call

by Gareth February 9, 2009

The Sunday Times has begun publishing a series of excerpts from James Lovelock’s new book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, due out at the end of this month. It makes bleak reading for climate optimists: So are all our efforts to become carbon neutral, to put on sandals and a hair shirt [...]

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