Quote from JedRothwell

I found good sources describing the present day cost of excavating surface mine coal, and shipping it. This one is excellent:

The reclamation costs after the coal is gone are enormous and not included in the cost of extraction.. Most companies shut their operations down and bankrupt the mining company to avoid doing it.

Who Pays for Mine Cleanup After Big Coal Goes Bankrupt?

Peabody Energy’s recent filing could change how the country funds mining messes.

www.nrdc.org

"Five companies that are collectively responsible for more than 40 percent of the nation’s coal mining capacity are now in bankruptcy court. But what’s happened with Peabody, specifically, may change the way states look at how they get and keep money for reclamation. Peabody’s cleanup bill in the Illinois Basin alone would come to $92 million, but it also operates mines in Australia, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, where the North Antelope Rochelle mine—the largest in the country—stretches across 100 square miles.

Quote from Alan Smith

"Five companies that are collectively responsible for more than 40 percent of the nation’s coal mining capacity are now in bankruptcy court.

That's terrible.

Perhaps that means my scheme to bury charcoal would also entail cleaning up the mess these open pit mines have been left in. That would cost extra money, but it would be an extra benefit. It would be yet another reason to do the charcoal megaproject.

This is an interesting point, and important, but I do not think I will mention this in the paper. It is too much detail. You don't want to cram too much information into a paper. It confuses the reader.

Some other interesting things about this have occurred to me that I mention only in the new Appendix, or that I left out altogether. Here are some of my notes, including things I will not include in the paper.

You can make charcoal out of all kinds of things, such as peanut shells and coffee grounds. The machine I link too lists those two, and others. So, the charcoal that goes into the reverse coal mines does not all have to come from trees. Some of it might come from organic garbage. The beauty of that is, cities will pay you to take the stuff away. That would defray part of the cost of the project. Part of the cost would also be defrayed by landowners paying to have deadwood removed from their property. That improves the quality of a forest, and reduces the danger of severe forest fires.

I wonder if algae could be used as a source of carbon, in addition to trees and organic garbage. There are schemes to make fuel out of algae with solar energy.

The charcoal might be used for coking steel. Like metallurgical coal, only it would be renewable. It would probably be cheaper than coal once the project reached its peak. I do not know if charcoal can be used for that purpose, but it has the same carbon content as bituminous coking coal. In ancient times, in Africa and Europe, all iron smelting was done with charcoal. Wood does not work.

Here is a table of the types of coal mined in the U.S., listed from low to high carbon content. I derived this from:

Coal prices and outlook - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

The numbers on this table show that charcoal has more carbon than the average coal shipped in the U.S., so the mass of material is reduced compared to coal. Assuming the ratios of subbituminous, lignite, and bituminous coal mined in the U.S. are about the same everywhere in the world, the average ton of coal is just over 50% carbon. Whereas the carbon content of charcoal is fairly uniform at 60 to 80%. Assuming it is 70% carbon on average, we can ship and bury 720 tons of charcoal for every 1000 tons of coal originally dug up, to move the same amount of carbon.

Note that not all of carbon in the atmosphere came from coal. Much of it came from oil or natural gas. However, this project would put it all back as solid carbon, because that is easier to bury than liquid or gas. So, we end up burying more coal than we originally extracted, even though the carbon content is higher. We need a bigger hole. Perhaps abandoned iron mines would work. Or perhaps we can make mountains where there once were plains.

Solid waste landfills must have protective linings to keep contaminated water from leaching into the water table. They need records of what is buried where. Some need pipes to collect volatile gasses from organic garbage decomposition. Fortunately, the gas can be sold as fuel. None of this would be needed when we bury a gigantic mass of charcoal. It is all the same stuff. It causes no environmental harm as far as I know. If water percolates through it, it comes out cleaner than when it went in. That is how charcoal filters work.

Re peanuts. A few years back I was contacted by someone in East Africa, they had several thousand tonnes of peanut shells, whole mountains of them that they were looking to find a use for.

Here, again, is the charcoal making machine I referenced:

Scroll down and you see the list of things it can carbonize, with photos of coffee grounds, rice husk, and sawdust, before and after. It is a versatile machine.

Elsewhere I read that carbonization produces some volatile gasses which are burned off. Making charcoal is pretty much self-heating. It does not take much fuel. People have been making it for thousands of years. It was widely used in Japan for space heating up to the 1950s. They still use it to grill eel. (Yuck!) Charcoal making is often described in Japanese stories and folktales.

See:

Producing and Marketing Natural Wood “Lump” Charcoal-Charcoal Making Resources

QUOTE

"Charcoal is made by heating wood or other organic materials above 400° C (750° F) in an oxygen-starved environment. The process, called pyrolysis, is exothermic – meaning it gives off heat once started. The more volatile elements in the wood, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and some carbon, combine to form gasses that escape from the wood. Some methods burn the volatile gasses to prevent them from escaping as pollution, at the same time producing surplus heat."

Quote from JedRothwell

Here, again, is the charcoal making machine I referenced:

https://www.alibaba.com/produc…-Price_1600120544661.html

Scroll down and you see the list of things it can carbonize, with photos of coffee grounds, rice husk, and sawdust, before and after. It is a versatile machine.

Elsewhere I read that carbonization produces some volatile gasses which are burned off. Making charcoal is pretty much self-heating. It does not take much fuel. People have been making it for thousands of years. It was widely used in Japan for space heating up to the 1950s. They still use it to grill eel. (Yuck!) Charcoal making is often described in Japanese stories and folktales.

See:

https://www.web3.cnre.vt.edu/f…coal/makingresources.html

QUOTE

"Charcoal is made by heating wood or other organic materials above 400° C (750° F) in an oxygen-starved environment. The process, called pyrolysis, is exothermic – meaning it gives off heat once started. The more volatile elements in the wood, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and some carbon, combine to form gasses that escape from the wood. Some methods burn the volatile gasses to prevent them from escaping as pollution, at the same time producing surplus heat."

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A more fancy name for Charcoal is Biochar.

Here is a shared link (paywall-free gift link) to:

The weirdest thing about being in a self-driving car

https://wapo.st/3sMTW1O

This is the first description I have seen written by an ordinary person riding in a self-driving car. I have seen other reports by people in scripted rides, organized for PR, usually with a human driver in the front seat on standby.

In the old days people, like me, heated with wood. The resulting ash, an excellent fertilizer, was used for gardening. Taking wood waste from the forests and making charcoal removes that valuable nutrient from the forest and is lost forever. Better to let the wood rot naturally. Also, large deposits of charcoal would be likely to catch fire from lightning strikes. I am against this idea.

Quote from GRMattson

Taking wood waste from the forests and making charcoal removes that valuable nutrient from the forest and is lost forever.

We wouldn't take it all! Just enough to return the atmosphere to the concentration it was at before the industrial revolution.

Quote from GRMattson

Better to let the wood rot naturally.

When wood rots naturally, all of the CO2 returns to the atmosphere. That's the "boom and bust cycle of forest carbon" (Forest Service diagram shown in my paper.)

Quote from GRMattson

Also, large deposits of charcoal would be likely to catch fire from lightning strikes.

Nope. Underground coal deposits do not catch fire. There is no oxygen underground. They have remained for millions of years without catching fire. Abandoned tunnel coal mines do have air and they do sometimes burn, but not deposits 50 to 90 m underground, that are pit-mined (open surface mined).

Quote from GRMattson

I am against this idea.

Are you also against natural coal deposits?

Quote from JedRothwell

Nope. Underground coal deposits do not catch fire.

NOP::: One hint:: https://www.geothermal-energy.…11/24_Masami_Nakagawa.pdf

@Jed

Pulping, logging, and firewood already removes a lot of minerals. You are proposing to remove the rest. I currently generate 80 to 100 pounds of wood ash per year, which I spread on my hay fields. While that doesn't help the forest directly in a case of reforestation of those fields it would. I prefer that way to sequester carbon than yours.

They claim climate change has caused the forest line in Canada to move 60 miles north That's a lot of potential carbon sequestration if handled property.

Quote from GRMattson

Pulping, logging, and firewood already removes a lot of minerals. You are proposing to remove the rest. I currently generate 80 to 100 pounds of wood ash per year, which I spread on my hay fields. While that doesn't help the forest directly in a case of reforestation of those fields it would. I prefer that way to sequester carbon than yours.

You do not sequester any carbon when you spread ashes. You have burned the wood and returned all of the carbon to the atmosphere as CO2. The ash is what is left over. It has no carbon in it. If it had any carbon, it would still burn. Ashes do not burn.

What I propose to do is to make charcoal. That is 70% carbon, the same as high quality bituminous coal. Wood is 50% to 60% carbon. Making charcoal removes much of the water and a small amount of other things, which are mostly outgassed as volatile gas which is burned off. It is better to bury charcoal than wood because it takes less space, and it has less water, air and bacteria, so it is less likely to rot or spontaneously combust. Rotting or combustion returns the CO2 to the atmosphere, defeating the purpose.

Quote from GRMattson

They claim climate change has caused the forest line in Canada to move 60 miles north That's a lot of potential carbon sequestration if handled property.

No, it is very limited sequestration. If all North American forests were restored, it would hold only about 10% of the atmospheric carbon North Americans have added to the atmosphere. A standing forest (live trees) can only hold a small amount of carbon. After they die, they rot, and the carbon returns to the atmosphere, which limits the total to around 10%. The only way to increase it is to permanently stop the wood from rotting. (Or burning in a forest fire.) The only way to do that is to remove all water, air, and bacteria, and seal it in an anerobic environment. That is, underground, where coal was preserved for millions of years.

In other words, the only way to reduce atmospheric carbon is to put it back where we found it, underground. Trees only hold a small amount.

Scientists develop a transparent window coating that can cool buildings without using ANY energy  | Daily Mail Online

IMO, passive cooling techs for hot climates like this new window with a transparent radiative cooling feature, and the new highly reflective white paints, are the quickest and easiest ways to significantly reduce energy use. Same goes for more, and better insulations as Wytten has mentioned many times, which can make a huge impact in both cold and hot climates.

No NIMBY or redtape blocking it's implementation every step of the way, as we see with the renewable energy field. Good thing about this new window is that it is designed to reflect the light at a wavelength that sends it right back up to space.

I already mentioned the concept of Biochar, part of my research career was done in this field. I have probably told this story before but is a good moment to repeat it. In the Amazonas basin plenty of places hace been found where the soil contains an unusually high amount of anthropogenic origin carbon. These plots are known to be extraordinarily fertile for cropping, compared to the surrounding tropical soils. These plots are known locally as “terra preta” (black land), and from studying them it has been learnt that they are 7000 years old in average, which means this carbon has been sequestered there for that long. They pose a puzzle also, because their abundance, thickness and associated anthopogenic origin implies that the Amazonas basin may had supported a population of several millions at some point, which is a puzzle in and on itself (where did all that people go?).

These plots of “terra preta” were what inspired research on the idea of Biochar as a biological and agricultural waste management strategy to use them to produce charcoal in pyrolitic systems and then use the obtained biochar as soil ammendment for agricultural cropping fields. The project I was involved in researched the quality of biochar obtained from crops in my desertica area, and the impact of using them as soil ammendments. In general the results are positive, and you get a net carbon sink for storing these residues in a rather stable form in the soil. The main controversy was to model and predict how stable that carbon would remain in fields being constantly used for cropping. Our team also took part in the process started by the American Carbon Registry to attempt to stablish the accounting rules for the use of Biochar made from agricultural waste as carbon sink. The idea was to promote at least 50 years as the period that this carbon would be stored in the soil (a modest aim compared to the 7000 years of terra preta), and this would have been a huge insentive to the use of biochar, as every tone of CO2 sequestered would be accountable for 50 years. In the end I recall only 5 years was agreed upon and this was a let down.

Dr. Lovelock, of famed Gaia Hypothesis, wrote an article around 2009 that stated biochar was mankind’s last chance to control CO2 levels, and probably get them down, as everyone seems to think is required.

Here is the article: https://amp.theguardian.com/en…/mar/24/biochar-earth-c02

Quote from Shane D.

Scientists develop a transparent window coating that can cool buildings without using ANY energy  | Daily Mail Online

IMO, passive cooling techs for hot climates like this new window with a transparent radiative cooling feature, and the new highly reflective white paints, are the quickest and easiest ways to significantly reduce energy use. Same goes for more, and better insulations as Wytten has mentioned many times, which can make a huge impact in both cold and hot climates.

No NIMBY or redtape blocking it's implementation every step of the way, as we see with the renewable energy field. Good thing about this new window is that it is designed to reflect the light at a wavelength that sends it right back up to space.

Disrupting the free surface flow of air over walls is also a useful method of reducing heat loss from buildings.

"A Hedera green façade – Energy performance and saving under different maritime-temperate, winter weather conditions"

A Hedera green façade – Energy performance and saving under different maritime-temperate, winter weather conditions

Thermal regulation is a key ecosystem service provided by urban plants. In addition to summer cooling, plants can insulate buildings against heat loss…

www.sciencedirect.com

Quote from Shane D.

Scientists develop a transparent window coating that can cool buildings without using ANY energy  | Daily Mail Online

IMO, passive cooling techs for hot climates like this new window with a transparent radiative cooling feature, and the new highly reflective white paints, are the quickest and easiest ways to significantly reduce energy use. Same goes for more, and better insulations as Wytten has mentioned many times, which can make a huge impact in both cold and hot climates.

No NIMBY or redtape blocking it's implementation every step of the way, as we see with the renewable energy field. Good thing about this new window is that it is designed to reflect the light at a wavelength that sends it right back up to space.

I really like the idea of the paint, send me a five gallon bucket for the house but windows are not a great idea, the cost to recycle would be large.

Quote from Frogfall

Disrupting the free surface flow of air over walls is also a useful method of reducing heat loss from buildings.

That many old cottages in the UK were (and are often still) covered in evergreen ivy is not and accident. It was deliberately done to improve insulation. The picture here is one of the less extreme examples.

Well, all researchers should not so lucky to have this kind of cottage as laboratory...

To myself, i so suffered last summer because my owm house was built with this kind of red bricks..

Also the special paint or windows covered, related by Shane D. should be a way to follow.

A way to follow if suppliers won't sell this disruptive technology to high..

A while Renault cars put this kind of treatment on wind shield , easily recognizable by pink highlights. Even if it was effective, it did not work, customers preferring to be too hot than to pay a little more for this option, which was probably overpriced..

Quote from Alan Smith

That many old cottages in the UK were (and are often still) covered in evergreen ivy is not and accident. It was deliberately done to improve insulation. The picture here is one of the less extreme examples.

@Jed

I never said that the ashes sequester carbon. I said it was fertilizer. You don't seem to be able to understand what people write. Living trees sequester carbon and can live 200 years and grow quite large. I said it before and will again. Google 'Estivant Pines'. Other species such as oak, maple, and yellow birch can grow as large and live long. Provide proof of your 10% figure.

Quote from GRMattson

I never said that the ashes sequester carbon. I said it was fertilizer.

Fertilizing field crops and grasses does not increase carbon sequestration. They are eaten or they rot in the fall, returning all of the carbon to the atmosphere. Fertilizer improves your crop but does nothing to increase carbon sequestration.

You said:

"While that doesn't help the forest directly in a case of reforestation of those fields it would. I prefer that way to sequester carbon than yours."

Temperate climate trees do not need water or fertilizer. It might help a little, but in the U.S. Northeast and in Japan, forests rapidly regrow as soon as you stop planting crops. In New England, tree coverage increased from 50% to 80% since 1900 because farms were abandoned. In Yamaguchi, Japan where I often go, hundreds of acres have grown into forest since 1975, where farms were abandoned. No one planted trees, fertilized or irrigated to accomplish this. Nature does it in no time.

Granted, if you want to grow some trees and not others, you might have to grow seedlings and fertilize them. In Japan regrowth usually starts with bamboo and kudzu rather than hardwood trees.

Quote from GRMattson

Living trees sequester carbon and can live 200 years and grow quite large.

Yes, that is what all sources say, including my paper. Actually, 300 years for some oaks. But even if all forests from 1600 were restored, the total mass of carbon from coal and oil burned since then far exceeds the mass of standing timber that would result. After all forests reach climax there would still be much more carbon in the atmosphere than there was in 1600, and it would not be sequestered for millions of years with tree growth alone. It takes millions of years for trees to form coal. Whereas people can speed up that process and do it in 100 to 200 years.

Quote from GRMattson

Provide proof of your 10% figure.

Not my figure. See the sources listed in Table 1. I mean 10% of what my methods would accomplish.

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJhowtofixgl.pdf

Quote from JedRothwell

Fertilizing field crops and grasses does not increase carbon sequestration. They are eaten or they rot in the fall, returning all of the carbon to the atmosphere. Fertilizer improves your crop but does nothing to increase carbon sequestration.

You said:

"While that doesn't help the forest directly in a case of reforestation of those fields it would. I prefer that way to sequester carbon than yours."

Temperate climate trees do not need water or fertilizer. It might help a little, but in the U.S. Northeast and in Japan, forests rapidly regrow as soon as you stop planting crops. In New England, tree coverage increased from 50% to 80% since 1900 because farms were abandoned. In Yamaguchi, Japan where I often go, hundreds of acres have grown into forest since 1975, where farms were abandoned. No one planted trees, fertilized or irrigated to accomplish this. Nature does it in no time.

Granted, if you want to grow some trees and not others, you might have to grow seedlings and fertilize them. In Japan regrowth usually starts with bamboo and kudzu rather than hardwood trees.

Yes, that is what all sources say, including my paper. Actually, 300 years for some oaks. But even if all forests from 1600 were restored, the total mass of carbon from coal and oil burned since then far exceeds the mass of standing timber that would result. After all forests reach climax there would still be much more carbon in the atmosphere than there was in 1600, and it would not be sequestered for millions of years with tree growth alone. It takes millions of years for trees to form coal. Whereas people can speed up that process and do it in 100 to 200 years.

Not my figure. See the sources listed in Table 1. I mean 10% of what my methods would accomplish.

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJhowtofixgl.pdf

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That’s precisely why Biochar is a great tool, it couples with something we have to do (crop producing) and sequesters a fraction of that carbon in the cropping soils while enhancing their productivity. I stopped formally working on Biochar in 2012 because of the failure to get the 50 years term carbon sequestration goal, but it remains a great interest for countries with less capital costs and greater capital access than Chile.