One of my mudges is that various species of enviro-climate dark siders each have tunnel vision for the form of carbon about which they are obsessing, either fossil or organic, i.e. not fossil yet, still in the working set. Nothing useful can be proposed without looking at all forms in this system. All the carbon counts:

Cutting down forests for agriculture vents excess carbon dioxide into the air just as industrial activities and the burning of fossil fuels do. But whether policies to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should include this terrestrial source of carbon dioxide is under debate. According to a new study this week in Science, failing to include land use changes in such policies could lead to massive deforestation and higher costs for limiting carbon emissions. . .

For this study, the researchers set the highest concentration that carbon dioxide could reach. Then they compared two ways to stay within that limit: in one, they taxed terrestrial carbon emissions and industrial and fossil fuel emissions all at the same rate. In the other, they only taxed emissions from industry and fossil fuels.

Ignoring terrestrial carbon led to nearly complete loss of unmanaged forests by 2100, largely as a result of massive expansions of bioenergy crops -- those planted to reduce the use of fossil fuels -- replacing forests. However, placing a value on terrestrial carbon emissions led to increased forest cover, while bioenergy still expanded considerably compared to today.

"When society tries to limit carbon dioxide concentrations, if terrestrial carbon emissions aren't valued but fossil fuel and industrial emissions are, economic forces could create very strong pressures to deforest," . . .

This study also shows that continual improvement in agricultural crop productivity for crops like corn, wheat, barley, and rice will be required to best make use of limited cropland. This suggests improvements to agriculture technology could be as important as improvements to energy technology in controlling carbon emissions.

"If society wants to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations at low levels, then we can't ignore the two thousand billion tons that are out there in terrestrial systems," . . .

All true, but still not the whole truth.

Sub-Saharan Africa has huge untapped reserves of natural gas. It also has a huge potential market, given that charcoal in African cities — the fuel of choice for hundreds of millions of people there — is often more expensive than gas. But the production of charcoal is destroying forests, and its use for cooking can destroy lungs in households choking on smoke. For the time being, promoting ways to use charcoal more cleanly and efficiently is a goal of many development specialists in Africa. But when will the jump to gas take place?

Q. Why isn’t development of this African gas resource, for both local and global markets, a priority for rich countries that claim they are committed to helping Africa break the bonds of persistent poverty? (Dysfunctional governments are surely an issue in some places, but not all.)

Q. Should projects that develop natural gas and related propane supplies in regions with few fuel choices get credit under proposed climate-treaty provisions?

On the climate front, discussions of ways to limit global warming seem more focused on capturing stray emissions of methane (more on that anon) than on pressing for ways to promote it as an alternative to coal, at least as a bridge to even less-polluting energy sources. For several decades, a cluster of scientists — in particular Jesse H. Ausubel, Arnulf Grübler, and Nebojsa “Naki” Nakicenovic — have pressed the case that methane is a vital ingredient for navigating toward a prosperous planet with a stable climate. It releases half the carbon dioxide per unit of energy that coal does. And if burned in certain ways, the resulting stream of CO2 is pure and easily captured for storage, Dr. Ausubel says.

It is also becoming ever clearer that the world has vast untapped stores of natural gas, everywhere from the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico to a wide swath of the Arctic.

One strand of development in human history has been the progression away from a carbon economy toward a hydrogen economy - from biomass, to coal to methane which is 4:1 hydrogen:carbon. The bang for the carbon buck for natural gas is much better than alternatives. When you also consider how much is available and that it is sometimes located in nations that really need the potential income as well as the energy, the case is very strong indeed. But the kicker is that since All the carbon counts any useful system analysis and prescription using the methane would be both more effective for reducing emissions and cheaper as well.

I'm always stunned and dismayed when I hear some pseudo-environmentalist poser screeching about methane. There's too much, or we are at peak production, or whatever anti-methane nonsense that they have heard in their favorite echo chamber, is repeated as dogma.

With an open mind and good information about the agro-enviro-energy system one can see some useful policy directions that advance the interests of all segments and the system as a whole. Methane, for example, is a feedstock in one type of nitrogen fertilizer synthesis. African methane could be used to make it, and so increase their agricultural productivity, while reducing pressure on forests for expanded low production agriculture, while also using methane for energy instead of biomass, and have progress on several fronts while reducing net emissions. Add in biochar production and use in some types of CHP systems and they could end up being net carbon negative due to increased use of fossil methane!