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Photosynthesis – the process that creates soil carbon – could be taking up almost 50% more CO2 than previously estimated, according to a report in Nature, the British scientific journal. An international team of scientists have reset the bar for CO2 draw down from 120 billion tonnes per year to between 150-175 billion tonne annually… between 25% and 45% increase. This would logically mean the world’s soils have even greater capacity to store carbon. But even though they have no evidence to support the contention, the researchers declare there is no increase in soil carbon sequestration. 

The report's lead researcher Lisa Welp, from the University of California's Scripps Institute of Oceanography, said: “The extra CO2 taken up as photosynthesis is most likely returned right back to the atmosphere via respiration.” The leader of the CSIRO Changing Atmosphere research group, Paul Fraser, said “it doesn't mean they hold more carbon, they (plants) probably respire faster.” “Probably?” “Most likely?” Is this based on evidence? “I'd love to be able to say it does mean that but we just don't know that, that's in the next few steps (of research),” said Dr Fraser. 

There are two possible reactions to the higher rates of photosynthesis. One is to dismiss the possibility that it means good news for those of us who believe soils have the capacity to be a secure bridge to a low carbon future. The other is to accept these findings as further proof that there is a new paradigm that suits the times. Opposition spokesman on climate action, Greg Hunt, is among the latter when he says: “ the scientific evidence has moved more strongly in favour of the enormous potential of land and agriculture-based emissions reductions.” Which do you choose: the past or the future?

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Measurement.

The key issue with measurement for the purposes of trade is not accuracy but certainty. The buyer needs to know that they are getting at least as much value as they are paying for. Every transaction requires an assessment of risk. There are several ways to manage risk in commerce: accurate measurement where possible and a margin for error based on a high degree of probability where it is not. There are several ways that soil carbon can deliver 95% certainty. But buyers of offsets based on avoided emissions - such as alternative energy - have no guarantee that the tonne of coal that was left in the ground as a result of their purchase will stay there for any length of time. Yet sellers of these offsets are not required to guarantee that this tonne of coal will remain unburned for 100 years.

It can be measured accurately but it can't be guaranteed at even 5% certainty.

The Kyoto Protocol is structurally biased against biosequestration. The 100 year rule has no technical or scientific basis - it was a policy decision. It is not based on the decay profile of a tonne of CO2 as we have been led to believe. The Permanence Requirement is a legal fiction.

The fact that it was even considered for soil carbon proves that either the IPCC was ignorant of agricultural reality or there was a conscious attempt to block agriculture because the architects of Kyoto have a prejudicial view of farmers as climate vandals who should not be rewarded for doing the right thing anyway. The CSIRO's ECOS magazine let slip in September 2010 that 'there is a virtual consensus among scientists' that farmers should need no incentive to build soil carbon. Senior CSIRO scientists have described anyone associated with the trade in carbon farming offsets as ethically challenged. Scientific objectivity is another fiction. The dearth of soil carbon data... who chooses what will be studied and how? How many learned papers appear to prosecute the case against soil carbon? How does the buyer of soil carbon science (us) measure what we get for our money? What does unsound science look like?

It looks the same as sound science to the untrained eye. Policy makers should learn to tell the two apart.

Originally posted by Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming

The Carbon Farming & Trading Association recommends that the Government extend its policy of giving Agriculture special status in Climate Change policy to grant special status to soil offsets on the grounds that the benefits to the community and the environment are of such a magnitude that to allow accounting rules to deny us them is a perverse outcome of an equal magnitude.

We recommend that a special class of offsets for soil carbon be defined that will enroll as many farmers as possible to sequester as much carbon as possible as fast as possible.

We recommend that, to meet that objective, the 100 year rule be replaced by a range of time frames to allow flexibility.

We recommend that the environmental definition of additionality be adopted, by which all carbon added above the baseline is deemed additional.

We recommend that the common practice test for additionality be abandoned because it contradicts the objective outlined above.

We recommend that the ‘business as usual’ rule, which penalizes Landcare farmers and other progressive landholders who have taken up carbon farming techniques early and rewards laggards who continue to degrade their soils.

We recommend that the offset unit be initially offered on the domestic voluntary market as an interim measure while measurement and other issues are resolved.

We recommend that the Australian Government expand the ambit of its campaign within the IPCC to have the need to account for non-anthropogenic emissions deleted from Article 3.4 into a broader initiative to fashion a regime sympathetic to sectors subject to biological cycles such as Agriculture.

(Originally Posted By Blogger to Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming at 4/13/2011 09:28:00 AM)