Reply To: Richard Branson – Virgin Pledge

[Duke Leto]

I apologize for my naivete, I’m a philosopher-programmer and not a chemical or environmental engineer. My concerns with reconverting biomass are twofold:

Firstly, I’m not sure there’s enough material in the domesticated biomass to be used as fuel in the emissions null scenario you describe. I understand Ethanol is quite land intensive, and even if we converted all the hydrogen and carbon in all our agricultural, industrial and residential waste, we might not have enough to fuel our present transport needs, and would cut off a source of fertilizer, I think. (Fertilizer is mostly nitrogen and phosphorus by weight, I think.)

Second, in that case, I’m worried that the mass in the existing landfills would need to be cannibalized, which would mean that carbon outside the ecosystem would re-enter it and therefore the atmosphere.

To my understanding, for what it’s worth, pulling carbon from the ocean would only somewhat accelerate the uptake of atmospheric carbon by the ocean, so the lime scenario is less efficient then I’d like to see.