Allan Yeomans invented, among other unusual ideas including 150 granted patents, the concept of combating Global Warming by increasing the humus content, and thus the fertility of the world’s agricultural soils. He’s been called the “the father of soil carbon sequestration”. He wrote a paper once on his ideas which also became his presentation in January 1990 at two related conferences in the US on the “Future of Sustainable Agricultural”. The paper was titled “THE AGRICULTURAL SOLUTION TO THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT”. A copy of that paper is at-
Red Box 5. Yeomans Invents Soil Carbon.
And that’s where the concept of “soil carbon sequestration” all started.
Allan Yeomans believes and argues that:
Our only solution to ending Climate Change is – HUMUS, NUCLEAR ENERGY – direct and indirect – and BIOFUELS. The biofuels are to cover the delay until nuclear-generated electricity and organic photovoltaic-generated electricity can produce enough low cost power for ammonia fuel production.
He often points out that so called “renewable energy” is only renewable because it’s nuclear based. He reminds us that, for example, sunlight is powered by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in the Sun, and geothermal power and heat comes from the fission of uranium from ground level down to deep inside the Earth.
Allan Yeomans’ main concern for the last 33 years has been the prevention of global warming and the halting of climate change. He sees this as the most important and significant and most urgent problem facing humanity this century. He argues that without using his concept of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by incorporating it into enhancing the fertility of the world’s agricultural soils, the warming becomes utterly irreversible. And he believes that chaotic destabilization of the Earth’s biosphere will most likely last a thousand years. And it’s already well under way.
His ideas are starting to be accepted around the world.
“Global Policy” is an innovative and interdisciplinary journal bringing together world class academics and leading practitioners to analyse both public and private solutions to global problems and issues. For more information on the Journal Google “Global Policy”. The Journal recently described Australia’s respected status on soil carbon and its relation to France’s 4 per 1000 Initiative; Australia being the country where the concept originated.
The journal stated —
“Australia is currently leads the world in this space, being one of the few countries to have a national regulatory regime recognizing soil carbon sequestration as a source of greenhouse gas abatement. This system, legislated in 2011 under the Carbon Farming Initiative, and now being implemented by the Government’s Emission Reduction Fund allows farmers and land managers to earn carbon credits by storing carbon or reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the land. Australia also has supply chain capacity to deliver soil carbon abatement from farm to the market – soil carbon is already being sequestered by farmers and sold as offsets. The success of this system has much to offer in understanding the achievability of this aspirational target set by France.”
France’s innovative “4 pour 1000 Initiative”—was officially launched Dec.1 2015 during the COP 21 Climate Talks in Paris. More than 100 nations, non-profits and NGOs signed on as giving their official support to the program. Included were 29 individual countries. Today; 2019 there are over one hundred.
The “4 pour 1000 Initiative” is based entirely on the concept of sequestering carbon into soil.
The French “4 pour 1000 Initiative” means a 0.4% increase in the percentage of carbon in the world’s agricultural soils: in English it would be expressed as a “0.4%” increase. It also equates to approximately a 0.7% increase in the organic matter content of those soils.
What is missing from this hugely commendable French proposal, and likewise the Australian greenhouse gas abatement plan, is how increases in soil carbon can be measured.
And additionally, how much farmers should be paid. And to certain extent, where the money is to come from to pay for their crucial contribution in terminating Climate Change. Fortunately, the answers are no longer missing
Measuring carbon changes in a farmer’s soil to pay him—go to to Red Button 6
Funding the overload CO2 out, and to keep it out ——- go to Red Button 10
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Allan’s wife Chris Yeomans OAM comments:
Allan Yeomans is the author of PRIORITY ONE Together We Can Beat Global Warming. This 500,000 word hard cover publication, I have often heard referred to as one of the most authoritative and comprehensive and insightful works on the subject of global warming and climate change. And how to end it. It’s said by many to cover, in considerable detail the strategies used by the fossil fuel industries to preserve their supremacy in the supply of power and agrochemicals to human civilization.
He describes, in his book PRIORITY ONE, the creation of the world’s anti-nuclear energy movement. It discusses the various forms of nuclear power generation and even the creation, around one and a half billion years ago of hundreds of almost serendipitously formed stable and self regulating nuclear reactors which, (although his wife), I don’t entirely follow).
Apparently the discovery by French nuclear scientists of natural occurring depleted uranium triggered the discovery of these strange natural reactors.
Allan is also the inventor and the author of Locution Therapy, a self managed form of psychoanalysis. His late and elder brother Neville was a medical doctor and highly respected professional psychiatrist. The brothers were always friends but I know, did seem to differ considerably on their forms of psychoanalytical treatment.
In the late 1950s he and a school friend produced and marketed their “Banana Chair” which became a household item throughout Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.
He and a couple of other school friends built the first ever multistorey steel/concrete home-unit block built in Australia. It’s at Double Bay in Sydney. It’s called Colebrook It’s eighteen stories high and has one hundred and eighteen separate units.
Allan was once offered a Captaincy in the Australian Army to go to Vietnam and take over maintenance of all the Australian Army’s military watercraft. Other commitments precluded his acceptance. He was at the time working on classified research for the Australian Navy.
He has given many talks and lectures on soil fertility and its relation to combating greenhouse warming in Canada, the US and here in Australia.
Allan took up gliding in 1965 and also became a respected meteorologist in the sport. He regularly acted as meteorologist and task setter at State and National Gliding Competitions. I think he had his first flying lesson at Bankstown Airfield in a Chipmunk in 1952.
Allan has always been active in sports. He once held the Australian water ski distance jump record.
In gliding, he became the first pilot to cross the Australian Great Dividing Range in a sail plane. That was in 1968. He has been a Chief Flying Instructor in two different fields of sports aviation. He has a helicopter licence and at 80 years of age he took up competitive aerobatics and is now a competent competitor flying his Pitts S2B Special. –(update 2018, he is now the world’s oldest aerobatic competition pilot.)
In 1993 Allan helped me set up an organization we called “Save The Farm Fund” to assist farm families in Queensland and New South Wales suffering the ravages of the prolonged drought that had settled on Eastern Australia in the 1990s. We managed to collect and distribute over $14 million worth of food and clothing to dozens of areas throughout both States.
I was honored by being named Gold Coast Citizen of the Year in 1995 and Queenslander of the Year the following year. A local park was named Chris Yeomans Park. I was also awarded an Order Of Australia medal in 1997. None of this would have happened without my husband’s help and his allocation of a big area of his factory in which the fund could collect, and pack, and ship goods to distant farm communities.
So much more to add about Allan – I always describe Allan as a conceptual designer. He made aircraft tooling for Qantas, Bullet proofed cars for Brinks, designed and built poker machines in the 1970s. With his many plow implement inventions he has won Australian National Field Days award about 7 times. He has patents on these numerous inventions.
Over the past 25 years he has been building a Solar Thermal Power Generator for commercial use and from that, won the Mayors Innovation of the Year Award on the Gold Coast around 12 years ago.
Most recently he has invented and built the Yeomans Carbon Still (read about it by clicking on Button 1.)
About 5 years ago I was speaking with the late Professor Harry Messel – he was 92 at the time and was, at times both Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Bond University. Allan studied physics at Sydney University when Harry was the physics professor there. Harry was saying to me that every time he hears on the news about Allan’s idea of using soil to combat global warming he thinks about him. He knew Allan has been advocating putting the carbon back into the soil for over 20 years to help stop the greenhouse effect.
Chris Yeomans OAM
As at 23/1/23 and as requested I’m assembling for you a “what to hammer list” of the basic ideas and concepts in my assembled solution to our biosphere’s rapid overheating.
Nutshell reminder list of what we need people to know and understand – especially people who construct the laws we have to live by.
1 Per unit of power produced, coal, oil and natural gas kill over 500 times more people than die from either wind or nuclear or solar. And that’s with the two nuclear bombs that ended WW2 included.
2 Cease all government subsidies to the fossil fuels and agrochemical industries.
3 Convert the air’s carbon overload (existing as carbon dioxide) into soil humus and doing so by any means selected or invented by the farmer. And pay them at least US$10 per ton – carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) for that removal. It’s the cheapest way to remove it. The quantity removed, however has to be easily and accurately measured. Or nothing happens. The Yeomans Methodology solves that problem. Read it. One farmer’s comment was – “It’s simply unfettered common sense“.
The existing carbon dioxide overload is enough to keep the biosphere heating for decades. Its therefore imperative that we in Australia demand that our federal government use the existing “Carbon Farming Initiative Act 2011” to approve the Yeomans Methodology to create Australian Carbon Credits. Businesses, organisations and governments around the world could use the Methodology to create their own carbon credits and so demonstrate to all, the methodology’s enate practicality.
4 To be clear we are defining “humus” as those molecules that are created from the final breakdown of soil life in the presence of air and water. Humus molecules are also huge – they can have molecular weights in the millions. They have long life-spans – up to thousands of years. In soil they are almost chemically inert. We also include as “humus” soil organic matter that will pass through a 2 mm sieve without any prior grinding. That means the material must have decomposed to the point where it is no longer a fibrous material.
5 In the air, methane gas is 225 to 350 time worse a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
6 Fracking is the process of forcing high-pressure liquids deep into the earth to fracture the rock structures and so release trapped oil and gas. That is oil and gas that’s been safely trapped, usually for millions of years.
7 Apply continuous and enormous monitory penalties to “Fugitive Gas” (methane) discharges that mining companies are constantly releasing into the atmosphere.
8 Ammonia liquid will be, and must be the primary fuel for all our portable energy requirements. It’s the only sane choice we have that we don’t have to grow on farm land, such as ethanol.
9 Ammonia is easy and cheap to produce from air and water and electricity. And now possibly from air and water and strong blue light. Also, ammonia is safer to handle than either gas, or oil, or coal.
( My mother always had a bottle of ammonia in the kitchen to clean the bench top. It’s safe stuff)