Thursday, November 29, 2012

Carbon Farmers ain't Carbon Farmers

Tho first reports are coming in from the $20m Soil Carbon Research Program. The results are profoundly interesting: “No individual management practice has the same influence on soil carbon stocks across all agricultural regions. And significant differences in soil carbon stocks often were not detected despite strong variations in management practices.” Dr Jeff Baldock of CSIRO is to be congratulated  on the completion of the SCaRP program. It will provide a powerful platform for developing future knowledge of this substance that is so important to our future as a society. Jeff delivered a paper Australian soil carbon stocks: a summary of the SCaRP program results at the Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries (CCRISPI) Conference in Melbourne this week.

The value of a piece of research in not always in the answers it delivers, but more so in the questions it suggests. These questions come to mind: Could there be other variables that were not considered in the analysis of the SCaRP data? For instance, the skill level of the farmer in the agricultural practice that they nominate will affect the result. That skill level could be directly related to the length of time the practitioner has been practicing. Another issue that could influence the outcome would be the combination of practices, which is common. Eg. grazing management and pasture cropping and/or compost tea inoculant applied to the same paddock. Every successful practitioner will tell you that it took several years to get their system right. It is not a matter of simply applying a ‘practice’ to an area of land to get a standard response.
Did the subjects of the trials self-nominate?What do they define as rotational grazing, time controlled grazing, cell grazing and continuous grazing? They are not all names for the same thing.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Zero take-up and its cause

"There are circumstances in which it is reasonable to assume that the take-up rate is low... where... there are significant impediments to adoption for all potential participants... impediments [that] may indicate that take-up of an activity is unlikely." 
(Carbon Farming Initiative, Positive List guidelines, Common Practice, October 2011)

Climate Change is our Napoleon








or, perchance,


Your most obedient servant,


Re-blogged from

Soil C sequestration causes emissions and degrades soil - Scientific Report

Believe it or not! Sequestering soil carbon is environmentally hazardous, and causes CO2 emissions, according to a report released this month in Soil Research. Working over the chemistry of discontinued 25 year trials of cropping practices, the conclusion was reached that 'there is an environmental and C cost associated with C sequestration'. It works like this: to increase C you must use N. When you add N  you reduce pH and make the soil acidic. To counter this degradation of the soil you have to add lime. Adding lime costs money, releases CO2, and causes emissions during mining, processing and transport. The paper runs the numbers on the additional costs for N and Ca vs the tiny amounts of C anticipated to be sequestered and it's just not worth it. Theoretically.

What does the CSIRO think? In addition to drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere, the CSIRO* lists these essential soil health benefits of increased soil carbon:

Consequences of depletion of soil organic matter:

·      Depletion of plant nutrients including N, P and S.
·      Increased soil bulk density (compaction).
·      Loss of aggregate structure.
·      Decreased water-holding capacity and hydraulic conductivity.
·      Decreased cation-exchange capacity.
·      Increased surface erosion.
·      Increased leaching of pesticides and heavy metals.
·      A decline in soil biological activity and diversity.
·      Declines in crop yields and quality.
Improving SOM levels will help reverse deleterious consequences (above). Improvements to:
·      soil structure,
·      soil fertility,
·      nutrient retention,
·      water holding capacity, and
·      reduced soil erosion.
·      soil physical properties such as aggregation, water infiltration, hydraulic conductivity and compaction
·      greater productivity and crop yields
·      reduced inputs of fertilizers, pesticides and water.

Mitigation options have numerous co-benefits:
·      food security,
·      environmental sustainability and
·      farm profitability

*Jonathan Sanderman, Ryan Farquharson and Jeffrey Baldock, Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential: A review for Australian agriculture, CSIRO Land and Water, 2010

Glad Tidings! A Soil Carbon Methodology is Born

(Glossary below)'

There is a Soil Carbon Methodology about to be ratified by the VCS - the most important standard in the voluntary market. This will mean many things: 1. We can start using it to design projects. 2. We can adapt parts of it to use with our CFI meths. 3. We can apply to the DOIC to have it recognised under the CFI.

The Earth Partners (TEP) have announced that they are the proponents of the comprehensive Soil Carbon Quantification Methodology. It "has been tested and refined on-the-ground on over twenty sites across more than four countries. The method has completed a thorough technical peer-review process and will be the first soil carbon method to complete an independent validation under the Verified Carbon Standard, and it being implemented in a USDA Conservation Innovation Grant.

The method is measurement-based, more accurate than model-based default methods. "TEP has also developed streamlined processes to screen, stratify, sample, and calculate carbon levels at a high confidence interval. As a result, TEP can utilize its aggregation models to operate at landscape-scale to cost-effectively assess projects that can generate the large amounts of potential carbon credit assets at low cost."

This methodology is modular and designed to be applicable to changes to agricultural practices, grassland and rangeland restorations, soil carbon protection and accrual benefits from reductions in erosion, grassland protection projects and treatments designed to improve diversity and productivity of grassland and savanna plant communities. The associated modules provide methods for quantifying and monitoring changes in carbon accrual in, and emissions from, soils as well as from other GHG pools and sources that may be affected by AFOLU projects.

There are 18 modules connected to the central methodology:
Module: Stratification for Validation

No one steals my "Meth"!

They sound like drugs, but these "Meths" aren't illicit, although they can cause brain-strain. Our Meths  (methodology or recipe for a carbon credits project) are about to change. EG.  The compulsory forfeiture of intellectual property in carbon "meths" has finally been identified as a disincentive to involvement in the CFI (Glossary below.) by The DCCEE.  It is one of a series of important shifts proposed in the new Draft Guidelines, out for consultation.

Intellectual property is covered in 3 places: 1. “You will retain all intellectual property rights in respect of your application, but you must agree to allow it to be copied, used and modified by DCCEE and others for the purpose of the CFI.” 2.  “Acceptable justification would include that the information should not be published if it reveals, or could be capable of revealing: trade secrets; or any other matter having a commercial value that would be, or could reasonably be expected to be, destroyed or diminished if the information were disclosed.” 3. “If you have applied, or intend to apply for a patent concerning a methodology proposal, you should contact DCCEE before you submit a proposal.”

Positive List: “The activity must be included on the positive list before the methodology proposal can be assessed. “ (This creates a chicken-or-egg confusion with the Positive List guidelines released on October 2011 which tells us that the “Activity is covered by an approved methodology.” Which comes first? Positive List or Methodology?)

The difficulty a farmer would have in taking a Meth off the shelf and using it is blamed on the Language adopted for the submission: “It is important that language and instructions are clear and unambiguous.” The Devil is in the Detail: “This item must be sufficiently detailed to allow project proponents to successfully implement the proposed activity by following these instructions. “

Instead of making up your own terminology: “…many terms are defined in the CFI glossary, the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 and the Regulations. Refer to these documents before defining a new term.”

And a new challenge for those working on soil carbon: “The process for estimating abatement is divided into 5 parts: 4) Item 11.4 – Account for cyclical variation.” This means a meth is expected to take account of the background cycles of emissions and sequestration before applying a new land management regime. You can see what it means: new levels of complexity, new layers of measurement, new costs, new hoops to jump through. New reasons for disengagement among farmers.


DCCEE - Department of Climate Change and Energy Effciency.
CFI - Carbon Farming Initiative
DOIC -  Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee
VCS - Verified Carbon Standard

Friday, November 16, 2012

Seductive fairy tales become popular science

This week we saw more evidence of how seductive the 100 Year Rule and the fairytales surrounding it can be. The Opposition's Climate Change spokesperson Greg Hunt  was being worked over by luminaries of the industry  in Carbon + Environment Daily . CO2 Group managing director Andrew Grant, whose company has carbon sink forestry operations in Australia and New Zealand, told CE Daily that Hunt's proposed 25-year rule "lacks scientific credibility".   Grant described 100 years as the standard international definition. Then he made his mistake: "The logic is that it takes 100 years for carbon to cycle through the atmosphere. So if you've demonstrated that you've removed it for 100 years, you've demonstrated permanence." Wrong.
Elisa de Wit, head of the Australian climate change practice of law firm Norton Rose, told CE Daily that, in order to count 25-year sequestration towards the nation's international commitments, the government would need to take additional steps "to address the subsequent 75 years in some way", she said. "Otherwise [the CFI] is not doing the job it is meant to be doing, which is offsetting the emissions that are staying in the atmosphere for 100 years," she said. Wrong.

Many believe that 100 years is the time it takes for a tonne of CO2 to cycle through the atmosphere. This is not based on sound science. It can take only 4 years, according to an IPCC Report. “The turnover time of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean.”[1] However, it can take far longer for the atmosphere to adjust to the new levels of CO2, up to 200 years.[2]

This 100 year timeframe is a policy-determination, not a technical one,” reveals an EcoSecurities report.[3] It is a period chosen by the IPCC for calculating the Global Warming Potential of each different Greenhouse Gas compared to CO2. For instance, Nitrous Oxide has a GWP of 298 (ie., one tonne of N2O is equivalent to 298 tonnes of CO2).  The EcoSecurities analysts calculate that removing a tonne of CO2 and holding it for 55 years is sufficient to counteract its effect on Global Warming. The IPCC uses 20, 100 and 500 year periods in much of its analysis. “The Kyoto Protocol set the time horizon against which [GWPs] are to be determined at 100 years (addendum to the Protocol, Decision 2/CP.3, para. 3).[4] To be consistent, it can be implied therefore that the Protocol also requires the benefits of sequestration in counteracting the radiative forcing effects of CO2 emissions to be evaluated over a 100 year time horizon. Any uncertainties derive from both this choice of time horizon, as well as future scenarios of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, are not technically driven but rather are a natural consequence of ‘arbitrary’ policy selections.”

Carbon Farmers of Australia asked Dr John Friend[5] (NSW Department of Primary Industries) about the 100 year turnover time of CO2. He agreed that it was popularly believed. Indeed he used it in his own presentation to our Carbon Farming Conference in 2011. On our request he looked for a reference for it in the scientific literature. He was surprised. “Regarding a specific reference for the 100 year value, I can't find one. From what I can gather, the rationale behind using 100 years is from this paper [Watson, op. cit.]  which states an ‘adjustment time’ of 50-200 years’. This paper actually states that the decay of excess CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be expressed in a single figure, so the 100 year figure seems to be more politically correct than scientifically correct.”

Conclusion: Consideration of time frames other than 100 years for contracted sequestration of carbon in vegetation and soils does not defy science.

[5]Leader, Soil and Salinity, Natural Resources Advisory Services, NSW Department of Primary Industries)