Biochar

Today I am going to try to relate my thoughts on global warming. I feel that you have to first accept the fact the earth is and has always has been constantly changing. You know like the ice age, and all the other ages you are always hearing about.
We see and hear about it every time there is a coastal storm. Some idiot has his house or parts of his property washed into the ocean or his basement has filled up with water. The fact that he never should have built his house that close to the ocean, or in a natural wet land. Is of course not his stupidity, but it's that dam global warming.
Now I'm not going to say that a lot of today's fears about the ozone layer are true or false. I just do not have the knowledge or the expertise to expound on it.But I do think that like all things,it's probably partly our fault and partly the earth's evolution. You all know my feelings about the news media.They feel the best way to beat their competition, is to scream gloom and doom. So much of what is said about global warming, should be taking with a tablespoon of common sense.

This brings me to biochar. To me this is a subject that makes great sense in slowing down the shrinking of the ozone layer. Basically what it does is capture and store carbon.Which is then put back into the soil to be slowly released back into the atmosphere.That's it in a nutshell,but of course it is way more complex then that.
I suggest that you google this subject. I think you will find that there are many ways to meet our problems head on,and do more good then bad. Or you can listen to Al Gore and all the other chicken little types who run around screaming "the sky is falling,the sky is falling".
Not only is biochar potentially good for the atmosphere,it also bodes well for farming and agricultural waste management. I have always felt bad when ever I had to cut down a tree or a bush. The good they provide,filtration of pollutants and noise, soil erosion and releasing of carbons into the atmosphere. That plus the beauty and shade they provide, made me feel like I was being disloyal to a true friend.
In the past I thought that biochar was a limited field. Because for it to be practical,it meant just using dead or diseased trees. And of course cutting down healthy trees would be counterproductive.
However this brings me to a new twist of biochar the use of chicken manure.The much maligned member of the poultry family. Now I love raising poultry as much as I love gardening.To me the two always went hand and hand.My best gardens were always the result of heavy doses of aged chicken shit.
I know the subject of raising chickens commercially is a sore subject with the do-gooders. They say it is inhumane to raise them for mass markets. They believe organic free range is the only way to go. But just try to raise a few chickens in your own backyard. They will jump up down and scream that you are ruining the neighborhood, and then treat you like you were an unregistered sex offender. The only thing I am going to say on the subject of raising chickens commercially is this. Skinless chicken is believed to be the healthiest meat there is. Mass raised birds would not exist if not for the farmer and the consumer.So a short difficult life has to be a better alternative to no life at all. Because if there was no demand for it, those birds would never have been hatched. Over crowding poultry causes the pecking order to pick on and wipe out the weak. So the do-gooders say stop it. But we have over crowding in our cities and the human pecking order is just as brutal as any chickens beak. Yet the do-gooders solution to that problem, welfare and political correctness. This makes as much sense as free range poultry. It brings out the rodents,foxes and weasels. Not to mention the vultures. And as far as anything organic goes, I put that right up there with the great spring water scam.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-02-10-cheap-carbon_N.htm If you read this article from todays tech section of the USA today newspaper you will get a much more rational explanation of how they process the manure into carbon briquettes.
For years chicken manure has been a problem.There has always been a problem with it leaching into ground water and fouling it. With this process that will cease to be a problem. This process will not only help the ozone layer. It will make a good heat source, as well as a good fertilizer.