A buried solution to Global Warming

By accident I ran across this fascinating Newsweek article about one of my favorite hypocritical politicians Mr. Al Gore.  Much of the article is about his courageous fight to save our planet, but buried in the article was a fascinating discussion about soils.

The potential for soils to absorb more of the CO2 that our utilities, factories, and vehicles spew poses a dilemma for Gore, one of two where his scientific and political instincts collide. With better management, soils could sequester much more carbon than they do now. The question is how much more. Soils scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University was surprised to get a call last summer ("Vice President Gore would like to talk to you") that began, "I have 15 or 20 questions about soils and climate for you." Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions. Other experts are even more sanguine. "If we feed the biology and manage grasslands appropriately, we could sequester as much carbon as we emit," says Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, who presented at two summits. The political clash is this: if you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions—as one of Gore’s assistants told LaSalle in asking him to dial down his estimate. (He didn’t.)

So let me see if I understand this scientist and this article.  Mr. Gore contacts this soils scientist and asks him to “dial down his estimate” that particular methods of farming can actually cause the soils to absorb all the CO2 emissions that humans are creating, because it might not be politically expedient for his position?  Why are we not hearing about this solution from the mainstream press?  Maybe they too would not find it acceptable within their “progressive” circles?  It probably would not help in facilitating the agenda of more and more government?  So I guess we won’t be reading much more about this possible affordable solution.