Is Burning Wood Carbon-Neutral?

here

here

and elsewhere

The timescale issue is usually overlooked.

I liked your insight.

please register dear guest.

milo

Please accept another invitation to register.

Mike

Yes, "nature has a mechanism in place for dealing with the increased carbon supply", such as melting of the ICE Caps, flooding human residences, creating unstable atmosphere, storms and tornadoes and killing human who generated this "release of carbon" in form of CO₂!

A kind of negative feedback mechanism!

There you go, bringing in facts, data, and critical thinking. Whats up with that?

I'm shocked that you didn't also bring in the thermal properties of water and its role as well as its % in the scheme of things.

Peace.

Milo

It could be then that a little extra CO2 causes more water vapor in a feedback loop. Just sayin'.

I actually go to the bottom line and say solve the global warming problem by lowering human fertility to close to zero for a generation or two.

jburkega overlooks the fact that the rate that carbon is being dumped into our very limited, finite atmosphere is far greater than the rate that carbon is being removed, especially considering that we're removing our most efficient carbon absorbers - forests - at alarming rates.

If you want to track the rate of CO2 increase in the air, just look at the correlation between the population and the level of CO2. You will find a very interesting fact, the increased levels of CO2 are likely occurring because of breath discharge.

good answer

The only way to be carbon neutral is to absorb as much carbon dioxide as you put out. In other words, it is about plants/trees or other CO2 absorbing capacity which you put into play to offset your emissions.

Firewood puts out, but not as much as fossil fuels, apparently. The total emissions depends on where the wood comes from. Some Australian scenarios are examined here http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17915933 All were found to produce less emissions than burning fossil fuels. Best outcome was for coppiced plantations, with a net sequestration of carbon overall - actually better than neutral . So it's not impossible to be carbon neutral in burning firewood, but you have to grow it...

The bad news is, don't forget we are emitters ourselves. How much CO2 do we produce in a year just by breathing? For a moderately active human being, the figure of 500 kg per year is estimated in this rude article herehttp://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/22233 So you may have to plant some extra trees to compensate Better than laying around breathing shallowly and feeling guilty..

It is all a matter of when you start your accounting. You could argue that because ALL of the carbon in the wood came from the atmosphere, and because burning does not release all of it back into the atmosphere (some is left in the ash and soot), that burning wood (as long as combustion is incomplete) actually 'sequesters' carbon. You could argue this, maybe even with a straight face, but in the long run of course this is just an accounting trick.

There is a more or less fixed amount of carbon in circulation. Some small amount arrives on earth in the form of carbonaceous meteorites, and some small amount is lost to space every time we launch a spacecraft. Over the next few billion years this carbon will cycle in and out of the biosphere. When the earth is eventually fried by the dying sun, all that carbon will be released into space for building the next generation of stars and planets.

Your carbon footprint point ref the car is almost sure to be correct. With a slight twist to your comment, it was only a few years ago a catalytic convertor took around 25,000 miles to break even, with regard to carbon created in it's manufacture to carbon saved by it's use. I don't know if it has improved or not. We were all expected to believe that carbon balance was for sissy's in those days. There are many more effective ways of reducing carbon emmissions from vehicles,than what is currently in use in the Industry. I have said in earlier posts you have to be very rich and politicaly powerful to be able to afford to rock the boat and get these ideas into the market place.

The main focus seems to be CO2, but am I right when I say that the half life of CO in becoming CO2 is less than 30minutes average depending on humidity and altitude etc?

The first para is purely a point made in support to 'babybear's' comments, but the second para is more in the way of a hopefully not too stupid question ref CO to CO2 transition.

KennyT

hello babybear, ok, i'll tell the neighbor that i'm just dumping tons of co2 into the air and killing the planet. just kidding. i hadn't really thought of it until i posted on here, but it all kind of makes sense, if the tree uses co2 to grow, than it dies, than it is harvested, than it is burned, all (almost all, anyway) that co2 did not just disappear, when it is burned the co2 has to go somewhere so up it goes to feed another tree (or 2 or 3). I am just glad to help the cycle of life. hopefully mankind will evolve enough to realize that there is more to this little blue orb floating in space than the mighty dollar and start using a little common sense( although that phrase is grossly mislabled because most of the people i have known do not have it so perhapse we should be calling it UNcommon sense instead, after all, evolution really has not done much for most of the folks alive today) and get their heads out of their asses and realize what it is they are doing, and if everybody does a little less polluting and just a little more thinking, maybe my grandkids will still have a planet to live on. i don't really buy into this global warming thing, i just think the earth goes through its life and death cycles like any other living thing. we are just a very small chapter in the grand scheme of things and soon enough, our story will be over(whether its a natural cause or man made). if all of us peasants have something to live in FEAR of, we are easier to keep in check(under control?) so we have global warming because the thought of war just isn't enough anymore. i will stop here now, i don't want this to be a political thing. good answer and thank you, it was worth the read as it can make one think a little more...........

Hello genx,

what you say makes sense. Global warming is happening. But who is to say it is not just a little 'blip' in the warming that has been happening for 10/20,000 years?

There is better ways of living thats all. It makes no sense to travel much more than a half a dozen bus stops to work.

Modern life is disposable. Unfortunately, all of those disposable items all mean a higher CO2. Phone and computers are but two of there type of thing which it should be possible to buy a basic desktop model and update by sliding the whole of the inside out and replacing it with the next more up to date computing power. That is just one though. But with regard to phones, I know people who have a couple a year. That is just daft! Again, perhaps it is time to make a really solid and well built phone and be able to replace the computing bit, rather than through phone away. They have only small amounts of some pretty nasty chemicals. If they are thrown away by the million it could be argued that is a worse danger to future life in the form of pollutants which will probably get into the water course and or food chain.

I find it kind of creepy see the Government hi up all over the pop stars just so as they look good! And make it seem like they understand what the real world is like to live in. Maybe they did understand as they were first elected. But, after a while, it just becomes too cosy, with the Approx' £150,000,00 plus income. So they may not all get that, but if you are there for long you start to know and work 'the system'? Then you get on some committees then, someone votes you as a candidate to the EU, where you will earn over a £1,000,000,000,00 a year.

Getting a little of the subject there and I apologise.

But as you say, they run the country by 'spin' tactics. Throwing out the sweety, and then hope you don't notice what is happening. Well, sorry Mr Brown and co, I have a brain and can figure things out just as well as you and your bloody advisors.

Sorry, getting a bit angry there. I just think people in parliament should be on a more realistic income. It was only about six months ago they had about a 25% rise. When they are telling 'ordinary people' they should get no more that maybe 1%. What would you sooner have, 1% of 30/40 grand. Or 25% of £100,000.00 plus? doesn't take much figuring ? And, by the way, I am invalid, and a comparatively well off one who gets almost £400 a month. No other income. Makes the rise of something like 20% in an MPs salary smell a bit I think.

They with the free jaunts to Europe and around the world, 'to find facts' they are as much to blame as anyone for the rise in C02.

I will say bye for now as I have a whole lot of emails to answer... See you later.

Take care.................

Please, be sure that on burning wood, the by-product you get as emission is mostly carbom dioxide and water vapour. One also get in the smoke some carbon mini particles as sue and minute amount of carbon monooxide.

Burning wood with a low exposure to air, namey, with small amount of oxygen, will result in higher amounts of neutral carbon, water vapor, large amount of carbon monooxide and smaler amount of carbon dioxide than in normal burning.

In any burning, either of wood or other polymeric substances, there is also an emission of complex polyaryls, benzofurans and dioxine. All these materils are very toxic substances but also carcinogenic and at least mutagenic.

I hope this answered your question.

Jacob Scheinert, ISRAEL

Thanks for "airing" my complaint as well as yours. We have one house that burns wood for heat in the community. I wouldn't want to have to breath any more emissions than that one house already produces.

Although burning wood is accepted as being carbon neutral in this day and age, and if you compare it with oil and gas, it is.

But there is a far more serious problem around when burning wood, that is ultra fine particles. These particles cannot be ejected by the lungs, so once there are there, there they stay........

Moves are afoot in Austria and Germany to make all wood burners have an electrostatic scrubber on the chimney, to filter out these dangerous particles.

It will be cheaper for most people to stop burning wood and to buy a pellets burner, they burn so clean that the scrubber is not needed! and of course they are as carbon neutral as wood, because they are wood!!

One wood burning stove can totally ruin the air quality for a small town.....

i do believe my wood burner pollutes the air in my community far less than say the foundry 3/4 of a mile away, or the chemical plant that was used to make agent orange for the veitnam war, or the welding shop that spews a yellow coloumn of fine particals 150 feet into the air 365 days a year, or the de-inking plant sending the stink of chemically treated paper over the top of my community 365 days a year. i looked into the pellet burner, and i would use one, except it would not be practical or cost effective in my particular application. i just wonder how much of these ultra fine particles are getting out of my 30 feet of chimeny, i'm sure some are, but how much?, the roofs on the buildings nearby are all bright white with snow and no black crap on them, so i do not think a lot of this is getting out. but i would like to know more about these scrubbers that you speak of...

Good tip - if you can see smoke, you are looking at fine particles.

My pellets burner shows NOTHING (when looking from the ground using binoculars) coming out of the chimney, no smoke, no steam (even with -26°C outside temperature). I went up on the roof a month ago when it was only -5°C and had a close check up, I could just make out a very faint shimmer showing that the exhaust was slightly warmer than the outside. air.......

Sounds like your local council should be looking at electrostatic scrubbers for some of the industry in your area too.....a household sized one costs here (uninstalled) around $3,500. For a business that is nothing and it can be set off against taxes.....even if they needed 2 or 3 to handle the amounts.....maybe someone on the council is taking bribes???? What you describe sounds awful.....

I can say that such "effluents" would NOT be allowed here, the police would be required to shut the business down until an expert team could see exactly what was coming out of the chimney....

Thanx for the tip, theres smoke but not alot, it is pretty much completely disapated by the time it gets 10-15 feet away, so on a scale of bad to good, i would have to say not so bad as i have seen much, much worse. The local building inspector told me that the city council is looking into the scrubbers to be required on wood stoves. as it is, i had to jump through some hoops just to install my stove, but i am one of only 3 people in my town (within city limits) to be using an outdoor stove, and according to statistics, only 2% of the population heats with wood, that is a pop. of around 11,000, so us diehards, as the inspector calls us, really are not choking out the city. but yes, i would have to speculate that most of "them" are probably getting a little extra pay on the side to "let things slide", afterall, its mostly good ole boys running the show. so as they say, welcome to america, where good old fashioned greed seems to be the new dream. its just not good, time for a little political reform (or ALOT) maybe.... Anyhow there is alot of regulation in place that is supposed to keep the pollution in check but maybe it only works as well as the SEC does on the markets. someday its all just going to get sold and shipped to another country and all of us peasants here can just work at wal-mart and give everything we have to the gov't so that people in other parts of the world can have a good laugh. sorry, i shall quit now, kind regards to all..........

The fine particles can only be "seen" when in heavy concentrations (smoke), of course they do not "dissipate" (as in gone completely), they are still there, but with enough air between them to make them invisible......sadly they are now even more dangerous (because they cannot be seen or smelt!) especially for children and senior citizens.

They are so light that they can be transported many, many miles by air movements. It takes heavy rain, for quite a long time, to remove them completely, which is why it smells so fresh after heavy rain - ITS JUST CLEAN AIR FOLKS!!!!

The rain takes on these components which adds to the acid rain effect as they get dissolved.....surely this is fairly well known today?

Do not take fine particles as being just a joke, anthropologists believe that there were also one of the significant reasons that our forebears died so young. There were many factors, but this was also a strong possibility, basically poisoned from fine particles from open fires.....

You can see (in the second link) that in the USA the regulations are manipulated to allow vast quantities of particles to be released "LEGALLY!", every day, of every week in every year.......

So what pollutes more? A car that gets driven 2 or 3 times a day every day or a stove that burns wood for 5 months a year? I suppose that if everything could run on nat. gas we could cut pollution way down, unfortunatly the infrastructure and vehicals are not there yet, so we will live as victums of our society and do what we can.....

The comparison does not work, there are many ways to heat your house and without producing fine particles. Wood burning is generally the absolute worst, followed by coal, coke and brown coal......not necessarily in that order either.....

Most people have to get to work somehow......but cars with cats or filters (diesels) also produce very little fine particles.

Its mainly the people who drive old gas guzzling V-6s and V-8s from yesteryear with little or no emmision control who are making the air poisonous....as well as wasting the earth's resources....

By the way, I burn pellets for the main house heating, gas for hot water and secondary heating (hot water & radiators) in case I run out of pellets or it has a problem and have a diesel exhaust filter on my car before you ask!!!

My pellets cost is around €150-200 per year delivered (usually burn them only in the winter) and my gas is about €300 per year for this last 12 months (also delivered!) as my family likes a warm house, if I was on my own, as I like it less warm, the costs would be much less than half of the above!!!

When I first moved here 22 1/2 years ago, with gas much less expensive, we were still using gas about €700 per year (it was in the Deutschmark time, but I have corrected it to Euros for you). We were also burning brown coal briquettes as well......probably at least €200 of them or so.....I have no BC bills anymore from that time....

Therefore total cost of heating and hot water (without the actual cost of the water itself) is less than €500 per annum generally speaking.....we have had our house fully insulated with an extra 10 cm of outside insulation. Also, 2 years ago we bought all new windows, all together it sure has reduced heating costs....in spite of price rises

Muliply the € x 1.3 (aproximate exchange rate) to get US Dollars if you wish....

I hope this helps....

Burning wood is carbon-neutral, as long as you are not reducing the green cover.

The good news is that you can be even carbon-negative, if you use TLUD gasifier technology. Here you have a possibility to remove the charcoal ( ie. carbon ) which is formed, and use it as a soil conditioner if you want. TLUD stands for Top Lit Up Draft.

About 2/3rd of total heat is available in the pyrolysis gases ( which can be easily burned ), and around 1/3rd of total heat is trapped in the charcoal.

Rajan Philip

YOU ARE RIGHT.WE NEED TO THINK HOLISTIC.

G.K.GHOSH

Sounds good..The province of Ontario has finished running a test at one of its 4 coal fired generating stations using wood pellets in place of coal. at the plant near Sault Ste.Marie..The results of a long term test surprised the generator..The power density was excellent and emmissions much better than coal..Consequently the government of Ontario has avoided the faux pas it was persuing (Promised during the last election to close all coal fired generating facilities under the provinces(centralized power generator known as Ontario Power)power generating corporation..Just on time in my mind..The logic is that the depressed forest industry in Ontario can now commence to making wood pellets for power generation in an apparently sustainable manner...I'm sure they must be utilizing this kind of system (top down flue gas utilization)to burn so cleanly and maybe generating charcoal on mass for the global market as a huge sideline...Sounds too good to be true but has many upsides at least at this point of view...

Regards...MArty W

Also, TLUD gasification is excellent for using biomass residues ( like twigs, husks, etc. ).

When you use residues, You want more green cover to provide the residues, and hence you are supporting Afforestation.

When you use fuelwood, mostly you are supporting Deforestation - except when you use fallen trees, branches,etc., and also when you resort to energy-farming using wastelands.

TLUD Gasifier Cookstoves are slowly becoming popular around the world now. Although small in size, can be used at millions of homes with good thermal efficiency and low emissions compared to the traditional three stone fire.

Rajan Philip

Nothing is free. Even burning hydrogen, which the moronic politicians are currently enthralled with, produces CO2. How H = O2 = H2O...No Co2 here...wrong. The hydrogen has to come from somewhere because there is no free hydrogen the environment. It is in ..daha... hydrocarbons. So ,if you remove it from hydrocarbons, you produce CO or CO2. If you produce it electrolytically, you have to expend energy to so so,, electrical energy. Since the majority of electricity is produced by burning coal or natural gas...there's that ole CO2 again. Nuclear, of course, does not produce CO2 but the same technically challenged politicians (read STUPID), that want to use hydrogen, or battery cars for that matter, can't build nuclear plants because they are both stupid and have sold their souls to the technophobic anti-nuclear crowd. The outlook is not good for anyone with a brain. Hoard your wood.....you're probably going to need it.

I have never heard so much Garbage...

Fact 1 atmospheric concentartions of CO2 are unprescidented in recorded history and the actually negative feedbacks to increased greenhouse concentrations and global warming are not understood. No one knows if we have passed the tipping point.

Fact 2 the idea that terrestrial ecosystems sequester carbon is unproven and at best a theory. If you burn down a forest and let it revegitate, think about the carbon mass that is taken from the once rich soils to replenish any significant vegitation.

Fact 3 burning wood actually releases more CO2 on an energy normalized basis when compared to more complex carbon chains, like octane for example.

Im not saying burning wood is the greatest issue we are dealing with. Wild fires were not controlled before modern times. If you heat your home with wood you are an economist, escpecially if you have the land to harvest it from. Our greatest issues are the commercial use of coal, gas fired turbines and the combustion engine. With the way we act sometimes it makes one feel chipper to watch "The Day The World Stood Still."

I apologize for the bluntness, but the energy normalized carbon production and historical atmospheric CO2 concentrations are pretty real. You can look into Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography for review of the missing carbon problem and debate the role of terrestrial ecosystems if you wish, but foliage and respiration alone describe the phenomenon of the sawtooth shaped graph of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

The Fact 1 you stated "unprecedented in recorded history" is the flaw in this farce of CO2 causing global warming. We weren't able to measure solar output until the 70's and how long is this recorded history compared to the earth's climatological history. There is scientific data in that actually points to a CO2 lean atmosphere when compared to prehistoric sedimentary layers. You may want to spell check your posts too.

I have my doubts that sediment layers accurately track atmospheric gaseous content. Ice cores on the other hand provide an accurate record of climate via stable isotope concentrations and atmospheric gases present via gas bubbles. Possible the most renown ice core data with significant correlation with other paleoclimate data would be GISP1 and GISP2 which date back about 200,000 years... maybe a small piece of world history but enough to prove that CO2 is no longer correlated with world climate and is far past previous known limits.

Please read up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/NOTEBOOKS/Notebook1.html

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/chem/carbon/images/paleotrends.gif

Hello Shawn,

You know you really should try and 'chill'. If you are not careful you will blow a vessel!

Fact 1 atmospheric concentartions of CO2 are unprescidented >>>in recorded history<<<

Unfortunately, you shot yourself in the foot with your first 'Fact'.

There is the nub, core, centre, crux, gist, kernel, nucleus, heart, point, essence.....

"Recorded History" which relates to this goes back a few hundred years and, any protocols used to 'figure out' and make things 'fit' in someones idea of how the world Atmosphere works, are just that, ideas and at best guess work.

Any 'findings' which can be said to be of import are "clouds in my coffee, and,..... he's so vein....."......Sorry carried away with my favourite song.......Anyway, these ideas are little more than clouds in your coffee. Maybe as important as a snowflake hitting my window, in the scheme of things.

We are here to give advice, not save the world. Though it might be nice to fantasise that we may, just, have as much effect in this forum on the way governments work, the people and agencies of which supply a good deal of the sponsorship for major Scientific endeavours, as that snowflake.

Take care ......................

So you say the Milankovitch cycles, carbon dated glacial deposits, the transfer of stable isotopes all in agreement to reconstructed climate patterns show less than belief that before human input things as simple as bulk atmospheric gas concentrations once correlated with global climate patterns? It is more than obvious that todays' reality has lost that correlation as CO2 has never been elevated in the atmosphere to the levels we are experiencing. Is it wrong to digest the fact that yesterdays negative feedbacks to rising greenhouses gases are at best a theory and we have no idea if there exists a fix to the burden we have placed on Mother Earth?

As far as Im concerned we have real recorded history from a single source that dates back several hundred thousand years, through stadial and interstadial periods, and has been back-up by several other paleoclimate reconstructions from other point sources such as corals and yes sediment deposits. You can choose to believe that scientist are wrong that we have no idea what happened prior to the construction of the Mauna Loa Observatory but thats more or less ignorance to any sign that we have done wrong. Whats your theory if I dare to ask? There is hope look at what unleaded gasoline did to the lead spike in our oceans.

Hello Shawn,

Firstly, let me apologise for the way I pulled your leg.

And with regard to what you mention in your post # 43, a lot of the things you mention are more or less general. New theories come along all the time, and each individual has to make a learned judgement, based on the likelihood, and facts, which have been proven to be correct with actual measurements of event in the near past to the period of a couple of hundred years.

Just because someone says something happened a certain way, does not make it fact. There has to be that thought in the back of ones mind,...........is this obvious, as they say. Is it possible or even probable that something has been 'proven' when the only person to be working on that particular era, or happening says themselves that it is a fact because they say so?

I am an amateur petrologist so understand that. And things like tree ring dating has been proven almost beyond doubt to be correct. But once you get beyond the 'real' and definitely measurable to the realm of it could be true, or it is said to be possible that things happened in this way. Then there is the danger point. ............It like newspapers reporting "A source has said"????? I do not buy or read any newspapers because that 'fact' you may read, if you trace it back, was more than possibly a reporter trying to fill the days new in 'because there was no news that day', and in time it becomes known as fact.

Science is not immune to this, and you can almost hear the thunder of so called PH D's putting in their latest 'sponsored' study on whatever it may be, which can be serious or could be "why fleas move more to tango music"? The "almost hear the thunder" ref' was to the last minute a 'Paper' publication which seems to be almost a 'horse race' (between the latest 'Profs' from the three or four top Universities) (scientific?) perhaps, important? Only to the researcher who was paid a quarter of a million to research something, that on inspection, turns out to be spin by a drug company to sell its wares. It is 'used' as a way to add weight to theories. Well, the same kind of thing happens across the scientific board.

When the history is termed in millions of years, then things get a little hazy, it becomes, "give or take a few hundred thousand or million". Even more reason to have your thinking hat on when you listen or read of some amazing 'study' which 'seems' to indicate water was found on Mars.

Compared to geological time, trying to 'date' something using an Isotope, is like recalling which sandwich you had for lunch yesterday. Because even the apparently 'infallible' and very important sounding tests carried out using Isotopes, well, first you have to know what Isotope is being used for that test, and second, you also have to be certain, or as certain as you can, the person doing the test knows what they are doing!. Because otherwise, not just that test but any other tests similar to it are open to question. No one can just say blindly, that a fact is a fact, until that 'fact', firstly happened and was not part of someones imagination, and second, it is proven to be 'probable', because people from different times and different countries and different spheres 'prove' that what happened, DID! And with as many disciplines and brains at work, if they all say the moon if made of cheese, then it must be. And I was being serious there not making fun. That situation happens very infrequently.

I will leave what turned into a rant, there, sorry. But I will add, I am more believing in science than I am in religion. Science and what it is possible to do is the singularly most important subject in my humble opinion. It is also one of my loves.

Take care, and remember, I am not decrying science, I just wish it would steer clear of the type of 'spin' that pervades everything these days.

Ill reply to your first statement before i gear up to go skiing... CO2 is a mere fraction of what it was along geological timescales... this timescale dating back before lifes existance and nothing more than a computer model that suggests that in the early days of existance before life was inhabital on Earth that CO2 limits were through the rough... OK ill accept that truth but, in that atmosphere you nor I could breathe the air.

I read to-day in our local newspaper 'The Times Of India" the brown haze in atmosphere is due to burning large amount wood in Asia. So it can at least pollute the atmosphere, but wood is oldest form of fuel used throughout the world.

can you say over-populated?

Over-populated. The emperor has no clothes!

Carbon neutral (in the dozens-of-years scale), but not sustainable on a large scale -- if everybody did it, we'd run out of trees fast. One hopes that new trees are planted to replace the ones that you burn. How old is your stove/furnace? New ones are more efficient; some come with catalytic converters.

Wow a lot of people are very opinionated on this simple question--because the 'answer ' is ""it depends on how you measure and when'. Too many people read frightening headlines and advertising crap and do not look into the subject matter. A lot of people do not have the education and training that would enable them to conduct their own analysis or literature search. Compounding the subject cloudiness is the media treatment of 'scientists and engineers' the last 2 decades has been so horrible we simply keep quiet and build our survival kit for ourselves and family.

FACT 1: The earth is generally warming--and has been for at least 15,000 years when the last ice age began to wane.

FACT 2: The ice core analyses used to 'measure' CO2 in ancienttimes are fatally flawed from the beginning. We cannot know how the trapped air was 'aged' during the thousands of years it was entombed--or what changes in composition resulted because of that aging. We can only speculate--and a SCIENTIST always makes sure any postulation founded on SPECULATION is also so labeled indelibly.

FACT 3: Water vapor is 20 times more effective per atom as a 'greenhouse gas' than CO2 and there is 20 times as much in tropical air.

FACT 4: Methane is also 20 times as effective at trapping heat as is CO2, and there is lots more CH4 than CO2 and we are releasing more all the time. We need to stop 'breaking wind!'

FACT 5:A society powered by and totally dependent on fossil fuel is not sustainable.

FACT 6: The present population of Earth is not sustainable--we do not have enough water, food, energy, .......the list is very long.

FACT 7: Only perhaps 10% of the present population can be sustainably supported.

FACT 8: The 'bugs' are winning the evolutionary race. They are mutating and developing resistance far faster than we can develop new ways to control them. We are doomed to die from pestilence--both large like locusts and micron sized bugs causing fatal 'infections'

FACT 9: Facts 8 and 7 will combine to reduce earths population much faster than socio psuedo scientists will ever imagine.

FACT 10: When all those unprepared are dead and gone, there will be plenty of natural renewable energy for the remainder of us to do just fine.

" A few years ago, an old Dakota Indian Chief was asked 'What did the white man do wrong? After thinking a few minutes, the wise old one replied " The old way was good! When the white man first came here--women did all the work. Men hunted and fished all day, played games, danced and smoked good medicine. Days were for play and fun, nights were for sex. Why did the white man want to change that?'

RELAX, the end point of life is the grave, only the path is our choice. Choose wisely.

Just to add my long boat oar to the mix.

The biggest problem with wood fired stoves is that hardly anyone knows how to operate them properly. Hence the nuisance created by excess smoke and soot.

Selection of combustible material aside, ie trying to burn unseasoned green wood or pine, old wooden fence posts soaked in diesel etc. The correct use of inlet and exhaust damping has a major effect on the "clean" or otherwise burning of the material put within.

My parents local council have decreed that wood fired stoves are to be banned forcing them to acquire an alternative heating system. In this case town gas. The net result will be a substantial increase in operating cost, a reduction in fitness and health for my father for the spurious offset of being "green" according to some fascist left wing social engineering shiny bum.

An increase in operating cost? Well my folks haven't had to pay for their timber use as the timber was freely available from various landscaping work, timber which will now just be landfill. Fitness and health? Well dad likes to swing the axe, it does provides him with plenty of exercise, and he reckons that during winter it warms him twice (how efficient is that!)

So now its a gas fired stove that will take its place. Fear not though the old wood fired stove will go to a friend of mines property up in the mountains where the shiny bums fear to go.

As for the stove operation, well having dealt with steam boilers in his youth my Dad has a good idea on the correct operation of a wood fired stove, but alas the neighbours around seem not to have had their stoves operation explained to them or they simply don't comprehend the instruction.

As for its effect on global warming? Well irrespective of the chicken little cretins, man's effect intended or otherwise is of no significance. There are things of much greater magnitude beyond the control of man at work here.

Hmmm, would it be unseemly to broach the issue of "carbon credits"?

bobguz

I haven't got the chance to read all of the responses. However, being "carbon neutral" doesn't necessarily mean something is better (in environmental and sustainability terms). Burning wood is inefficient (evident from the sooty smoke). For e.g.

• Some of the nitrogen compounds that get burned would make great fertilizer when decomposed on the ground; not to mention impacts such as corrosive acid rains and health impacts.
• CO (not CO2) you get from the partial combustion of wood is also a health hazard (not to mention environmental hazard). So, the partially digested wood would be a better option compared to fossil fuel (which are heavily digested over several thousands years).

Of course, the assumption here is that you are going to plant a tree that will take in the CO2 you released by burning that piece of wood. Wonder how many of us plant a tree just to compensate for CO2 we breath out; forget for all the energy we consume.

Each topic/thread remotely related to energy end-up with discussions of how to solve the issues and all that. While such discussions are good, repeating them thousands of time is not going to take us anywhere. Simple googling will have yielded answer to the original question. Anyway, my few cents to this stuck-in-the-first-gear debate:

• Whether fossil fuel consumption is causing global warming or not may be debatable. And does it make a difference when we don't have enough resources?
• not having enough fuel for growing human population should not be debatable.
• Abundance should not be confused with infinity
• Conservation of resources doesn't mean lower standard of living.
• How can you say the standard of living is higher when you are so inefficient and unconsiderate about other fellow creatures?
• Human society have been evolving since primitive times towards less impact on other creatures and more stability e.g.killing an animal and eating whatever edible raw to cooking the killed animal to make a kill efficient to agricultural production. Where in the process did we lost the direction and end-up gulping everything whether essential or not? And then started justifying it as "higher standard of living"?

What complete and utter twaddle you write! at least 80% is totally inaccurate....

You haven't got the faintest idea of what you are talking about.....

May I suggest that in the future you study your subject before writing...

Totally laughable......if the subject was not so serious.....

I keep hearing that wood burning is carbon neutral but this statement is generally made without looking at the actual science of CO2 release related to burning.

First of all, the assumption that burning wood is carbon neutral assumes that all of the carbon released during the burning would be released when the wood (fallen tree etc) decomposes. This is not true. In the northern Boreal forest 80% of the carbon mass is in the soil. This is less in warmer climates but still significant. When a tree decomposes, a significant amount of its carbon is sequestered in the soil.

Secondly, we are not looking at the rate of carbon sequestration that occurs when trees grow. It is very slow. It might take years to grow enough wood as I can burn in one cold night. Even if I have a wood lot, and even if the wood that is being burnt is collected from deadfalls and the woodlot is maintained. There is no way we can generate enough new growth per year to sequester the CO2 released in heating one home without huge amount of land being dedicated to a woodlot. This is not very practical for most of us. (Even if that wood were to rot naturally and release its CO2 component to the atmosphere, it is really slow, I have some firewood that has been sitting in my back yard for over ten years and while it is rotting a bit, is still pretty sound and holding onto its carbon).

Third, plants do use soil carbon when growing, not just CO2 from the air. Therefore, you would need to grow more wood than you burn (in the same time period of your burning) to replace the carbon released by your burning.

I like the term carbon rate neutral. This is an important concept for people to understand. Another concept to consider is dynamic equilibrium. The earth is in a state of dynamic equilibrium (a geomorphology term at least as I originally learned it). The process of constantly trying to maintain this equilibrium is a large driver of our weather systems (i.e.: hot air at the equator trying to equilibrate with cold air at the poles causing air movement and temperature mixing etc.). In a natural state, the amount of carbon released equates to the amount of carbon sequestered over time. Once we much about with the earth's ability to keep things in equilibrium, we see changes from what we are used to as the earth moves into a new dynamic equilibrium, i.e. rising temps due to immediate increases in CO2. I don't think burning wood is an answer to our problems or even a way to slow it down considering that we can not sequester enough carbon from burning wood to make it neutral in the short term which will cause an increase in CO2, i.e. not carbon neutral.

Don't forget the environmental devastation caused by burning too much wood in overpopulated areas of the world and the various other constituents released from a wood stove even with a catalytic converter (dioxin, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc).

Here are some back of the envelope calculations comparing the amount of CO2 released per btu of energy produced:

Natural gas – 117.6 lbs/MMBTU

Wood – using the wood fired boiler (industrial sized) factor - 195 lbs/MMBTU

Using the factor for a wood pellet (home unit) stove - 185 lbs/MMBTU

Fuel Oils

Kerosene – 159.3 lbs/MMBTU

#2 oil – 159.3 lbs/MMBTU

#6 oil (high sulfur) – 162.7 lbs/MMBTU

Anthracite Coal – 230 lbs/MMBTU

Sorry to be a naysayer, but this is an important topic. Instead of deluding ourselves that that we are helping by burning wood or other biofuels, we should be focusing on alternative energy such as solar, wind, tidal, etc. Combined with efficiency, public transportation, etc, we could halt the excess release of CO2 that we are causing now.

A very interesting Topic!

Whatever our opinion or definition of "Carbon Neutral" only time will tell if burning wood in efficient modern equiptment is a good or bad thing.

Rest Easy and make your own decisions...........

Generally speaking NO it is not. Wood burning is very inefficient so you generate a lot of CO2 when you burn it for very little heat. It would only be carbon neutral if you grow new biomass that sequesters an equivalent amount of CO2 to the amount you emit when burning the wood. The calculations indicated that a typical house requires a forest of about 29 acres that requires about 100 saplings to be planted for every 30 year old tree harvested. This would be a massive undertaking and this is what is necessary to be carbon neutral. As you will quickly see, there is not enough land for people to go this route. This is not a good energy plan if we want to reduce CO2.

Something else to consider is that harvesting wood removes soil from the land. :(

Aside from everything already mentioned, wood burning is carbon negative due to the fact that the root systems that are left behind, in the ground, are composed of carbon that was gathered from the atmosphere.