Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes to global heating. But methane emissions from ruminant digestion play a minor part in atmospheric methane levels, according to a recent article published on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Animal Production and Health branch.

Atmospheric methane has stabilized at 1999 levels, though livestock numbers have been increasing by an average of about 17 million per year, according to UN FAO data. "At this time there is no relationship between increasing ruminant numbers and changes in atmospheric methane concentrations, a break from previously assumed role of ruminants in greenhouse gases."

http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/aph/stories/2008-atmospheric-methane.html

Methane is an important subcycle of the carbon cycle. Methane (CH₄), like carbon dioxide (CO₂), is a transparent, odorless gas. Per gram, methane has about 21 times the greenhouse potential of carbon dioxide, but unlike carbon dioxide it breaks down fairly quickly in the atmosphere.

Methane is produced during anaerobic fermentation of plant material. In the carbon cycle, lignin and cellulose are typically broken down by methanogenic bacteria, such as are present in the digestive systems of ruminant herbivores and termites, and which cannot survive in the presence of oxygen.

A recent PowerPoint presentation by Abe Collins, attached below this article, outlines the soil carbon opportunity, the role of carbon farming, and policy directions to realize the opportunity. Right click and choose "Save link (or target) as" to download it.

Lecture to the Royal Society in October 2007 by James Lovelock. "Climate change on a living earth," 65 minutes. Lovelock eloquently depicts the fragmentation of scientific understanding, which makes us unable to grasp global heating or to counter it. "In our hubris, we believe that we can be stewards of the earth long before we understand it."

"Perhaps the saddest thing is that if we fail, Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilization the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are through our intelligence and communication the planetary equivalent of a nervous system. We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. Perhaps the greatest value of the Gaia concept lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that our contract with Gaia is not about human rights alone, but includes human obligations."

Draft of lecture here.

Says Prof. Ross Garnaut in Australia, who heads an independent commission on climate change commissioned by Australia's Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments:

"I don't think it's impossible to measure either the carbon in soils - the increase in carbon - or the vegetation on properties. It is going to be much easier if groups of farmers within a region band together so that you reduce overall costs in that way. But in the end we're going to need to develop satellite imaging, remote sensing and other new tech ways of measuring these things so we can get the costs down." He says scientific work on measurement 'should be given very high priority'. "The opportunity in the Australian countryside is very large."

http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com/2008/09/soil-carbon-credits-as-soo...

By Martha Holdridge, West Wind Farm

Editor's note: This article is reproduced with permission from the Summer 2008 Grassfed Gazette, published by the American Grassfed Association.

American Grassfed Association member Martha Holdridge, owner of West Wind Farm, used soil samples to determine that her West Virginia farm sequestered 15 tons of CO2 per acre over the past four years (photo by Kenny Kemp, Charleston WV Gazette).

From 1987 to 2007, at West Wind Farm, we regularly sent soil samples from our pastures to the West Virginia University (WVU) testing lab--in some years requesting organic matter tests. In those same years, there has been increasing public alarm about greenhouse gasses and global warming. In the fall of 2007, Dr. Ed Rayburn, extension forage agronomist at WVU, reminded me that an increase of organic matter in the soil means that carbon dioxide (CO2) is being drawn from the air into the soil. He kindly agreed to calculate the rate of carbon sequestration in the pastures of West Wind Farm.

Our average organic matter in 2002 was 4.1 percent, in 2004 it was 7.0 percent, and in 2007 it was 8.3 percent. According to Rayburn’s calculations based on a 2-inch deep sample, over five years (2002-2007) we had sequestered 15 tons of CO2 per acre or four tons of carbon per acre.

How do you measure or estimate soil carbon? Here are three handbooks.

1. Pearson, Timothy, Sarah Walker, and Sandra Brown. 2006. Sourcebook for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry Projects. Winrock International.
http://www.winrock.org/ecosystems/files/Winrock-BioCarbon_Fund_Sourceboo... (661 K pdf file; right click and "save link as" to download)

2. Stolbovoy, V., Montanarella, L., Filippi, N., Jones, A., Gallego, J., and Grassi, G. 2007. Soil sampling protocol to certify the changes of organic carbon stock in mineral soil of the European Union. Version 2. European Commission, Joint Research Centre. ISBN 978-92-79-05379-5
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/FOR/INSEA/News/Stolbovoy/EUR21576.pdf

summary poster:
http://eusoils.jrc.it/ESDB_Archive/eusoils_docs/Poster/Soil_Sampling.pdf

3. McKenzie, N., Ryan, P., Fogarty, P., and Wood, J. 2000. Sampling, measurement, and analytical protocols for carbon estimation in soil, litter, and coarse woody debris. Australian Greenhouse Office, Technical Report 14.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/ncas/reports/tr14final.html

Winrock also has a sampling cost calculator available from
http://www.winrock.org/ecosystems/tools.asp

An article from ODE magazine about soil carbon research and trials in Marin County, California.

". . . John Wick--who owns this ranch in the hills of Marin County north of San Francisco with Peggy Rathmann, author of the classic picture book Goodnight Gorilla--goes on to outline the climate crisis in terms all-too-familiar to anyone paying attention to the issue. But he then offers a solution that would astonish most people, especially green activists: 'Eat a local grass-fed burger.'"

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2020

Presentations from the Marin efforts at the June 2008 presentation, Carbon, Soils, and Your Ranch

http://groups.ucanr.org/RangeSoilsCarbon/Carbon%2C_Soils_%26_Your_Ranch/

See also

http://marincarbonproject.org/ and

http://marinclimateinitiative.org

Christine Jones published an article in the Australian Farm Journal that may help to explain why the assumption is widespread among agricultural scientists that soil carbon cannot be increased quickly. The Roth C model, for example, ignores the role of mycorrhizal soluble carbon, focusing entirely on biomass input for humification:

"When carbon enters the soil ecosystem as plant material (such as crop stubble), it decomposes and returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Hence the lamentation 'my soil eats mulch', familiar to home gardeners and broadacre croppers alike. While plant residues are important for soil food-web function, reduced evaporative demand and the buffering of soil temperatures, they do not necessarily lead to increased levels of stable soil carbon.

"Conversely, soluble carbon streaming into the soil ecosystem via the cytoplasm of mycorrhizal fungi can be rapidly stabilised by humification and permanently retained in soil, provided appropriate land management systems are in place."

http://www.farmonline.com.au/farmmags/australianfarmjournal/article.aspx...

A short article from Australia on the work of Christine Jones:

"Thousands of farmers are joining a voluntary soil carbon movement adopting specialised cropping and pasture practices to improve yields and income, while measuring loads of carbon storage on their farms."

"But the Senate inquiry, looking into the impacts of climate change on agriculture, also heard the results have been largely shunned by the science fraternity because the carbon storage data does not fit into existing carbon models."

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/...

If we quit adding carbon to the atmosphere, it won't stop global warming anytime soon. That's why people are hoping that there are ways to get the extra carbon out of the atmosphere, and that we can put these billions of tons of it somewhere safe.

Breaking apart carbon dioxide, or extracting carbon dioxide from the air, takes work. Work means energy. It's the reverse of combustion. There's a triple problem here: the technology itself, the disposal, and the energy to do the work.

It's a common saying that you can't unscramble an egg. You break an egg into a bowl, break the yolk membrane with your fork, mix the yolk thoroughly with the white, and stir it around in a hot skillet. The cooking uncurls the egg proteins, breaking some chemical bonds and causing new ones to form.

Now we've got a scrambled egg. The egg proteins won't go back to their raw configuration when they cool, and even if they did it's impossible to wield the fork in such a way as to separate the yolk from the white. Roomfuls of the latest and greatest laboratory equipment, the best Google algorithms, or even all the king's horses and all the king's men would not unscramble our egg. The mixing and cooking are irreversible processes.

It's a familiar impasse. Can we change the way we see the problem?

Feed our scrambled egg to a hen, and tomorrow she'll lay us a new egg. Her metabolism—a product of evolution rather than technology—will break down the complex scrambled egg molecules into simpler ones and reconstitute them, with losses of course, into a new, raw egg.