ECONOMIST FEATURES CEES BIOCHAR
CONFERENCE
The following article appeared in The Economist print edition (August 27, 2009).
CHARCOAL has rather gone out of fashion.
Before the industrial revolution, whole forests disappeared
into the charcoal‐burners’ maw...
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ECONOMIST FEATURES CEES BIOCHAR
CONFERENCE
The following article appeared in The Economist print edition (August 27, 2009).
CHARCOAL has rather gone out of fashion.
Before the industrial revolution, whole forests disappeared
into the charcoal‐burners’ maw to provide the carbon that ironmakers need to reduce their ore to
metal.
Then, an English ironmaker called Abraham Darby discovered how to do the job with coke.
From
that point onward, the charcoal‐burners’ days were numbered.
The rise of coal, from which coke is
produced, began, and so did the modern rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It is a sweet irony, therefore, that the latest fashion for dealing with global warming is to bring back
charcoal.
It has to be rebranded for modern consumers, of course, so it is now referred to as “biochar”.
But there are those who think biochar may give humanity a new tool to attack the problem of global
warming, by providing a convenient way of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, bury
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