Kenneth.. No offense, I wanted to extend the debate. I can not imagine that on a scale of a few years the respiration of living organisms are predominant on photosynthesis. I understand that if all the carbon on Earth was as CO2, life would be impossible. This is not yet the case. Of course to return to the situation before the exploitation of fossil fuels, we should rebury all carbon extracted, but it is hardly conceivable. Would it not be better to accept climate change and combat its adverse effects?

Instead of building desal. facilities and growing cultivated crops to bury soil carbon in arid areas, the much easier method would be to replant the local perennial native grasses, and the nature of native grasses is soil building by the deposit of carbon in the soil.    

Depending on the arid part of the planet you plan to try this method on a large scale, by taking soil samples around existing native grasses at various depths, and measuring the amount of carbon per hectare and doing radiocarbon dating the soil carbon, you can confirm the amount of carbon that is sequestered, and also measure for how many thousands of years that carbon with be put away.  

I am proposing that the arid countries of the world set aside a total of one billion acres of currently barren land from India to Morocco, as Ecological Restoration Preserves, and replant the local native grasses and annual native plant colonizers.  

The work could be paid by the sale of carbon credits, and once started, would cool those areas, and bring increased rainfall, which would help start a cycle of more rain producing more vegetation, etc.   I have written about this idea at http://www.ecoseeds.com/cool.html.

I think some inexpensive small scale test plots could prove out this idea, and if it works, could be cut and pasted in arid regions as carbon sinks. 

Kenneth... We don't think at the same scale, I don't understand what you call transient. Rainforests store carbon since millions years and will continue. Deforestation is inevitable because the economic development is growing for all the populations. I only want the scientific community, economists and politics think about large scale forestation of arid and the benefit on decades. I estimate $ 30 per tree in arid.

Craig.. I am studying the ideas you present. I come back to you later.

See the study: "Soil Carbon Sequestration and Age in the Historic Grasslands of the United States"

at http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~sleavitt/GreatPlainsSoils.htm

I am not talking about the recently (

Thanks for this stimulating discussion.

Kenneth.. OK, we can’t do anything about long term climate change because we haven’t really all the data and the parameters involved.

We don’t really know if or how the carbon dioxide and others greenhouse gas influence the climate.

OK, Oceans cannot be consider as carbon sinks.

The population and the economic development are growing irremediably.

All the actions taken might be negative in the long term.

But now what have we to do? What are the urgencies at very short term?

Rise in sea level, desertification, deforestation, scarcity of fresh water and lack of education which leads to a growing population and disadvantaged populations.

In uninhabited areas, sunny and abundantly irrigated, are you agree that an acre can store from 500 kg a year of carbon? With a “trivial” area of about several billion acres. It could be an interesting carbon sink; however, far from the three trillion tons of carbon that we will eventually get to the surface of the Earth. It must be not the only way.

What about burial? What is the environmental impact of burying organic compounds? How much it cost? How much energy is needed? Every dollar has a carbon footprint. I do not see how this is possible.

Craig.. The ideas you present are very attractive. I do neither see how it is possible without irrigation; the time factor seems crucial, humanity has never conducted such ambitious projects such large surfaces and on time too long. People who invest will need faster results. On the other hand, I think if the irrigation of arid becomes cheaper as deforestation, we have made great progress.

If we look at this question as doctors, and look at the different "medicines" that could be used, and what possible negative side effect might be, then the Ecological Restoration of barren arid areas stand way above all others with no obvious bad side effects.  

The Ecological Restoration of barren areas would cure multiple problems for the planet: 1.) Sequester carbon, 2.) Lower maximum temps. 3.) Reverse desertification, 4.) Eliminate dust storms 5.) Increase rainfall 6.) Reverse spatial extinction of native plant and animal species in those areas.  7.) Provide income for local people in the form of carbon credits. 8.) Reverse the traditional planetary method of producing income by harvesting natural resources, to producing income by restoring the natural ecosystems. 

Thanks for bringing up that very important point about any method to deal with CO2 or cool the planet, the energy cost to accomplish what each of the various methods are proposing?  It sounds like you should be on a board that is evaluating the various methods that are being proposed so far, because I have not heard anyone mention the issue of energy required so far?

People are already occupying those barren desert areas, so only  a shift from harvesting the natural resources of the billion acres, to replanting and restoring the local natural resources would be the change.  Unlike the other CO2 or cooling methods already on the table, the Ecological Restoration method would cure the CO2 and ground-heating problem without any significant direct or indiorect energy increase for the billion acres.  You would work with already existing resources, energy and water/natural rainfall.

We can only speculate and theorize which method is going to be the most efficient, until some governments start funding some test cases to measure the energy costs and net effects.

Outside of all the methods to directly deal with the CO2 issue, another method would be if each country went on a carbon diet, as is described by Saci Lloyd in her book "Carbon Diaries 2015".  which is probably the most important book written so far in the 21st century, because it describes how a carbon diet might practically function and look for a whole country, using her home country, the UK, as the example.

Thank you for your reply.  I think the original question was about using agriculture in arid lands to store carbon, and how long would it be stored---I am suggesting looking into Ecological Restoration of the local perennial grasslands as a method to store carbon on a larger scale, like the one billion barren desert areas world wide.  

Perhaps a separate question needs to be asked on Research Gate--If and when anyone on the planet is going to seriously start to tackle the CO2 issue?  

In 2015, it is as if we are like back in the 1950s with the tobacco industry causing lung cancer issues, where the people making money off the cigarettes know there might be a problem with their product, but do everything to keep the public from doing something about it, especially any regulations against the product.

Just like the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry and agriculture (via the methane produced by cows mostly) will only be reined in, perhaps after millions or billions of lives are lost from the use of their products.  In the case of tobacco, it was cancer, in the case of fossil fuels, it is and will be extreme weather events caused by global warming.  

I am sitting here today in the fourth year of drought in California with zero rainfall this week and record daytime temps., when it should be the peak week of rainfall for our four month (Dec-March) rainy season, for example. 

That was the premise that caused action in Saci Lloyd;s book, after the UK was hit by a storm that was confirmed to be caused by CO2 and global warming, then the whole country went on a carbon diet in the story.  

And the group that pushes countries to start fiixing the CO2 issue may come from an unexpected area of society, like the insurance industry for example.

But to get back to answering this question, I believe some investment in small scale test plots could answer this question very cheaply and easily, plus some carbon dating of the carbon already in the soil. 

Thank you for your reply.  I was mentioning the current drought in California because extreme climate changes especially long term droughts, can be deal-breakers for civilizations like the Maya, the Anasazi, the Arabian Nabataeans, the Cambodian Angkor civilization and the Indus Valley civilization. 

The problem is, if we change the climate by adding too much CO2 and methane to tip the balance towards long term droughts where millions to billions of people live in 2015, unlike ancient times when those people could migrate to wetter areas, there is nowhere for the populations of India or Pakistan to go, if the monsoon stops raining in those areas for a few decades, for example. 

At least if we start propping up the arid lands adjacent to the large population areas of the planet, that may help stabilize the trends towards desertification, and produce a more secure annual rainfall pattern for those areas.    

Thanks for your reply.  CO2, climate change and global warming and what to do about it will be something that will be argued for the next hundred years, but the most immediate weather/climate change is happening right now in India and Pakistan, where the Pakistan-Arabia Dust Cloud is impacting the weather/climate.  

The restoration of the arid native grasslands would fix the Dust Cloud problem, and could be used to test how much cooling it provides, how much carbon is sequestered, etc. Attached is today's image of the Dust Cloud

Really, Get a grip.  It is not only humans that are changing the climate.  The climate changes have been continuous.  At one point we were ate 31% oxygen.  It is irrelevant to the initial question.  The initial question is focused on arid land.  The relationship of photosynthesis and carbon production in the plant is tied to water.  The transpiration rate, photosynthesis and carbon construction are parts of the same process.  Why are arid lands arid? NO WATER.  So no water = no carbon. Gino is beating a dead horse here as the freshwater shortage is far more pronounced than the carbon issue.  The shifting glacial/interglacial periods will not be controlled by humans.  These shifts bring changing wind and weather patterns and we will not control them.  If some of you live long enough you will see the arid areas bloom again.  Carthage was a great grain producing area when Hannibal went up against Rome.  The area has changed in combination of human impact and cyclic warming and cooling patterns. Only the overactive need to feel guilt makes humans blame themselves for everything that changes the weather.  Just look at all the animals and people that were sacrificed to appease the gods and bring rain.  

What I am suggesting is replanting the local native plants especially the perennial grasses in arid regions, and you can see the difference that protecting the local native vegetation makes in Oman from the two pictures attached. 

Craig,

The pictures reflect many peoples great work ... good carbon storage to help offset the 10 billion people in 2050 CO2 emissions.   But the problem is where the additional carbon will be stored, aside from the additional 3 billion human bodies in 2050.  

Kenneth, outlaw cremation and force short term carbon storage through mass graves, he said tongue-in-cheek. 

Kenneth, As usual you have an excellent sense of humor. 

• find ways to grow plants without additional water, like they did  positive results are guaranteed and proven 

Final Report of Groasis Waterboxx experiments in Galapagos by Charles Darwin Foundation

A Summary of the Treesolution with the Groasis Technology

http://agriculture.gouv.fr/video-3-minutes-understand-40-initiative-soils

Finally I am not the only one to propose to make  fertile land:

Soil degradation threatens 40% of land

Thanks to plants and living organisms, soils contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere. Carbon-rich soil organic matter is essential: it retains the water, nitrogen and phosphorus that are indispensable to agriculture. But alternating phases of drought and intense rainfall accentuate erosive phenomena. In the long term, almost 30 million hectares of arable land could be lost every ten years.

http://www.inra.fr/en/Public/Global-warming/All-magazines/Four-parts-per-1000-carbon-storage-in-the-soil