---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:03 AM
Subject: re: A Bad Bet on Carbon
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
From: barry levine
Date: Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:03 AM
Subject: re: A Bad Bet on Carbon
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
Mr. Bryce makes clear that capture and sequestration of CO2 is an irreparably flawed strategy. He then generalizes to damn all carbon sequestration schemes. His unjustified rhetorical leap leads to an unjustified conclusion. Until the Industrial Revolution, humankind's impact on atmospheric greenhouse gases was limited. The fuels we burned had been recently formed by photosynthesis and would have soon gone back to the atmosphere by natural processes anyway. This changed 200 yrs ago. Since then, we have pumped gigatons of carbon from fossil fuel pools--safely sequestered in the earth--into the atmosphere to trap heat and to acidify the oceans. Even if we were to restore the world's forests to their state of 1800 and even if we were to achieve a carbon-neutral economy overnight, still we would have to address the gigatons of carbon we have taken out of sequestration. Coal is a fabulous form in which to sequester carbon. To go on digging it up and burning it is an abomination. While we cannot put atmospheric carbon back into the earth as coal, we can and must put it back either as biochar or as anthropogenic peat.These technologies are at hand today. We must not let either senator Lieberman or Robert Bryce misdirect us from the task of implementing them.
Barry Levine
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