Saving Gaia with Biochar Geoengineering

                                    James Locklock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis

James Lovelock is a genius.  He is best know for the Gaia hypothesis proposing that biologic organisms interact with non-biologic processes on earth in ways that help maintain the conditions for life on our planet.   It was inevitable that Lovelock would become interested in Planetary Geoengineering.   Curiously, given his authorship of the Gaia hypothesis, Lovelock rejects the idea that growing plants or other natural processes (i.e. so-called Green Geoengineering) by itself can cope with the greenhouse warming that is projected to occur as result of human fossil fuel consumption, because any attempt to increase global biomass by growing more plants will ultimately just result in more decomposing plant debris that returns CO2 to the atmosphere.    Lovelock proposes instead that agricultural waste be converted to charcoal to remove CO2 from atmosphere.   He calls this process biochar.

James Lovelock:

What we have to do is turn a portion of all the waste of agriculture into charcoal and bury it. Consider grain like wheat or rice; most of the plant mass is in the stems, stalks and roots and we only eat the seeds. So instead of just ploughing in the stalks or turning them into cardboard, make it into charcoal and bury it or sink it in the ocean. We don't need plantations or crops planted for biochar, what we need is a charcoal maker on every farm so the farmer can turn his waste into carbon.

Biochar seems like a simple and effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But there is a complication. You can't make biochar by burning waste material in a bonfire ---combustion causes the CO2 to go right back up into the atmosphere. To create biochar you have to heat treat the waste in a specially controlled environment that keeps the carbon in the biochar----you need a device that Lovelock calls a "charcoal maker." The idea is to wind up with a charred simulacra of the original material---something like what happens to volcanologists if they get too close to a volcano when a pyroclastic flow is coming down the slope.

If I could make a suggestion, I would scale up Lovelock's plan beyond just agricultural waste. Why not also have "charcoal makers" in every restaurant so all the food trimmings and waste food could be shoveled into them. Why not replace garbage disposals in every home with "charcoal makers" so home leftovers could also be converted into biochar. Why not put charcoal makers at every garbage dump and every landfill so people could chuck their grass cuttings and shrub trimmings into them? Why not install a charcoal maker on every yacht, oil tanker, fishing boat and US navy vessel?

Imagine the mountains of biochar we could produce. We could make piles of black charcoal biochar as far as the could see.
Now here's the hard part---- please try to think of somewhere to put it all.