Among the people who accept that global warming is a fact, there is a growing consensus that humanity has put itself on a run away train. Too much carbon dioxide & other greenhouse gases have been emitted into the earth's atmosphere, so in the future we will be guaranteed more melting of the polar ice caps & sea level rise, more weather change in the form of droughts, floods, hurricanes & typhoons. Climate zones will heat up, with a change of flora & fauna, leading to extinction of species. Bruce Sterling in The Caryatids suggests most nation-states will collapse because of the turmoil caused by global warming.
Humanity not only needs to stop global warming, but reverse it. Numerous ways to reverse global warming have been suggested, from injecting sulfur particles into the atmosphere to cool it by shielding the earth from solar heating to building artificial trees to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But probably the fastest & easiest way to reverse global warming is the process known as biochar.
Bio char is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass. The resulting charcoal-like material can be used as a soil improver to create terra preta,[1] and is a form of carbon capture and storage.[2] Charcoal is a stable solid and rich in carbon content, and thus, can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Bio char is of increasing interest because of concerns about climate change caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG).
As I see it, bio char is the most promising method of carbon sequestration since it is a low tech method that is easily understood,& easy to put into practice. Peasant cultures can put this technique into practice very easily, & have in the past. The Indians in Brazil have used bio char to make the soil know as terra preta. A global program of bio char may be able to reverse global warming in 20 to 30 years, along with a total halt in the use of fossil fuels.
What should Obama do to encourage bio char? Offer farmers $10K or more annually to bio char crop wastes or grow bamboo, hemp etc to bio char. Since third world farmers may point out correctly that bio char is a remedy to a problem they did not create, payment to them of $2k or more annually could change their minds. In fact, it might be a good idea for the oil & coal companies to donate huge sums to bio char programs. This would be a big PR bonanza for them.