Need a little pick me up? A fellow that I've been talking with for a couple of years, Danny Day of Eprida corporation, might have a story that works for you. He was recently profiled in The Atlantic Monthly as a Brave Thinker. He's braver than that in some ways in that he almost stroked out last year but still carries on.

My interest in his stuff was due to the unique type of biochar production process his company developed which combined regular pyrolysis of biomass with some fancy extra steps to take in feral CO2 and water that in the end produced biochar doped with ammonium and a lot of free hydrogen gas that could be used for a variety of purposes. The valuable coproducts of biochar production made it more economically viable, which means that it was more likely to catch on without a lot of political shenanigans and rent seeking.

In a recent email he has more news:

The real story, yet to be told, is the production of carbon-negative oxygen-positive (Cnop™) fuels and energy made possible through our strategic alliance with MagneGas (MNGA) and Rugerro Maria Santilli. Yes, oxygen-positive.... you can breath the exhaust and it has a negative carbon footprint. This is a wonderful story in development. With small systems and coproducts produced by the world's farmers, feeding existing infrastructure, we will be able mitigate the pendulum like swings of climate change which the earth has endured for millions of years, if we act quickly.

Our release of stored carbon is accelerating this natural cycle along a very dangerous path toward abrupt climate shift. However, now humanity has a purpose for being here and the world will benefit by our presence. I believe this will be an age remembered when we reached environmental maturity and brought peace to our planet through sharing and collaboration. Please pass this along to your friends who need a lift. There is hope.

IMV this is smart stuff even if the whole climate thing turns out to be a false alarm, and that's my test for sensible technologies. They have to be viable on their own, something we would do in any event since they are smart. Elegant biochar technologies that not only make the char but use the producer gases to make valuable products, and that are farm scale so that they don't require a lot of counterproductive lifting and hauling as well as the worrisome concentration of power, are a boon to agriculture.