Umm...plant more trees maybe?...Terra preta?..Carbon Farming?

How humans cooled the earth -- 500 years ago

From Salon.com

One of the tell-tale signs of a really thought-provoking book is that soon after reading it, you start seeing its thesis replicated everywhere you look. So it has been with one of the tomes I referred to in yesterday's post "Polynesian Chickens in Peru and other Mysteries," Charles Mann's "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus."

The massive depopulation of the Americas via smallpox, hepatitis and other diseases introduced by Westerners (perhaps as much as 95 percent of the existing population died in vast pandemics) and the large landscape-altering scale of agriculture practiced across the "New World" by pre-Columbian cultures are two of the big themes of "1491." Both popped up in a presentation made by two scientists at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union last December. (Thanks to MongaBay for the tip.)

The scientists contend that after the die-off, massive reforestation on abandoned agricultural land occurred on a large enough scale to contribute significantly to the period of global cooling between 1500 and 1750 known as the "Little Ice Age."

After examining soil samples and sediment cores from numerous locations in Central and South America, Richard Nevle, a visiting scholar at Stanford's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford, and Dennis Bird, also from Stanford, concluded that the reforestation sequestered as much as 10 to 50 percent of the carbon necessary to cool the earth. Up until 1500, the soil samples showed a steady increase in charcoal content, likely generated from human-caused fire used to clear forest. After 1500, the scientists discovered a drastic drop in charcoal content. No more burning.

The scientists acknowledge that reforestation was just one factor in contributing to global cooling. It may not even have been the most critical factor. But the research is sobering nonetheless, in its hint as to humanity's power to alter the fundamental characteristics of life on this planet, long before we were burning fossil fuels as if there were no tomorrow. We did it back then, we're doing it now, and maybe, just maybe, if we exert our collective will in the proper direction, we can fix our mistakes.

Let's just hope it doesn't require another vast die-off to set things to rights.

― Andrew Leonard

CO2 to Soil: Yields for a Future

Carbon Sink: CO2 becomes Soil!

Cows have lately been getting a bad reputation as contributing to the destruction of the atmosphere. Feedlot cows do, in fact. Grass-fed cows, on the other hand, can contribute to the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere...and you can help. Read on...
Here are some alternate sources, since CFA is now defunct.
http://carbonfarmingcourse.com/
http://carbonfarminghandbook.blogspot.com/
http://www.carbonfarming.org.nz/
The article is still practically appropriate.

Carbon Farmers of America is a company built around a vision of ecological restoration and hope.

Together, grassfarmers and conscious citizens can effectively grow new topsoil and reverse global warming.

Topsoil has the capacity as a carbon sink to capture the excess carbon in our atmosphere. And our soils desperately need that carbon.

Today, we have the knowledge we need to rapidly create new topsoil over much of the Earth’s surface. Given this knowledge, Carbon Farmers of America offers every American the most responsible choice available: create that topsoil starting today.

The front lines of this historic undertaking are family farmers holistically managing grassland farms and carefully planning the grazing of livestock.

The excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere causing global warming can be transformed, through photosynthesis by grassland plants and then decay by soil life, into stable soil organic matter.

Soil organic matter is the key to soil fertility, true economic prosperity, climatic stability, clean and abundant water and vibrant human health. Once created, and under continuing good management, a significant portion of soil organic matter stays in soils for up to a thousand years. If the American people were to restore the soil fertility of the Great Plains that we have destroyed in the last 150 years, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would be reduced to near pre-industrial levels.

Seen globally, the same results would be achieved if we humans were to increase the organic matter levels of the world agricultural and grazing lands by 1.6%.

(See Allan Yeomans, Priority One: Together We Can Beat Global Warming)

As we capture carbon dioxide and create true wealth through soilbuilding we must also radically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.

We the people have the power to stop global warming and restore the topsoil that is our truest wealth!

What We Do

Carbon Farmers of America trains, equips, scientifically monitors and provides ongoing support to member farmers across America to rapidly create new, high organic-matter topsoil. We pay our farmer members for every ton of carbon dioxide they capture in new topsoil.

Together, within the next ten years, we aim to create the new topsoil that will feed our descendants, insure clean and abundant waters and stabilize our climate.