Wood burning stoves - Radio 4 programme (CO2 and going green etc)

[Jules]

For an average-sized home, 7 cords seems about normal for a heating season here (but it'll be less in the UK), and I think you can (sustainably) harvest around 2 cords per acre per year. All depending on what sort of woodland you have, of course.

I expect somewhere around 3 acres per home would be good for the UK (with some margin for error), maybe 4-5 here.

The air's often full with the smell of wood stoves up here in the winter

- but they seem to generate very little visible smoke.

cheers

Jules

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well the only necessary realease of CO2 is in making te steel and conreter, bioth of which do that.

But its

- a lot less CO2 than they replece and

- a lot less CO2 than it takes to make a windmill of equivalent generating capacity.

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[The Medway Handyman]

Sounds like a leading question to me.

[Andy Champ]

If by running a nuclear plant you are able to take coal/gas/oil plant offline you are reducing overall emissions.

This is the same argument used for wind etc.

Andy

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:12:39 +0100 someone who may be Andy Champ wrote this:-

That is a different argument to the claim that nuclear is carbon neutral.

As I have said before, if carbon dioxide was the only consideration then there would be some attractions to nuclear. It would be an easy decision. However, there are other issues to do with nuclear, issues which start with mining the ore and continue all the way to what is done with it after the fuel rods have been taken out of the reactor.

[dennis]

There is no difference in the net CO2 emitted by burning trees and coal/oil if you plant a tree. They both emit a lot of CO2 and it takes 20 years to get it back using the new tree.

You only save CO2 if you plant the tree and burn it in 20 years time. Burning existing trees is no better than burning coal/oil and in many ways it is much worse.

Don't let some econut tell you otherwise.

[dennis]

However most of the GW has occurred in the last few decades, about the same timescale as burning trees.

So by using trees we can expect to have about the same effect on GW as we have had from fossil fuels in the last few decades.

[dennis]

Apart from the fact that you release a few decades worth of CO2 and then take a few decades to recover it if you plant at least twice as many trees so you can cut them again.

Trees are too slow, farming algae and dumping it into deep ocean trenches is probably a better way. Maybe you could even pump the algae into old coal mines and make some new coal. ;-)

[Zen83237]

Er but wasn't it CO2 before it became wood and what happens to the carbon in the wood when the tree eventaully dies and rots, well turns into CO2. So unless you build warehouses to store dead trees I can't see what the problem is.

Kevin

[Big Les Wade]

"dennis@home" posted

But if you fell and burn a tree, you can plant a new tree right there in its place. If you burn fossil fuel, you have to find a new place to plant the new tree. That isn't easy in a world where there is a finite amount of cultivable land and considerable competition for its use.

[andrew]

Or burn them such that half of the carbon is retained and spread as a soil amendment and half provides heat. This breaks even with rotting after about

10 years given the varying half lives of biochar and small dimension wood.

If you don't want the heat from waste then there is a process that mimics coal formation which is claimed only requires 200C and some rusty iron filings as a catalyst and once up to temperature with some heat exhange is supposed to be self sustaining, I'm not sure about that one.

I do know making biochar is feasible as I've made char by various means, including recently running a 500kW(t) municipal biomass boiler to produce char with the bottom ash.

Whether it's economic...

AJH

[David W.E. Roberts]

Reading this has raised a possibly interesting question in my mind.

According to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy we are a carbon based life form.

Therefore presumably as the population increases more carbon is tied up in living flesh and is taken out of the atmosphere - mainly via eating crops, and eating animals fed on plants.

So increasing the world population should reduce the total atmospheric carbon and the greenhouse effect - although the methane from dedicated vegitarians may reduce the success of this strategy.

Nevertheless I feel it is my duty as an environmentally aware male to start shagging every nubile female in reach in a desperate attempt to save the planet.

No sacrifice is too great, if it is for the greater good.

Cheers

Dave R

[mark]

Plastic carrier bags in landfill is the answer. That's carbon locked up for centuries or so the anti-plastic bag lobby tell us.

mark

[dennis]

There are plenty of place to put trees.. all the areas where they have cut down the rain forests to start with. Then there is all the countryside the farmers have ruined. They could build motorways with 50m between the carriageways and plant tree there and that would save all the carbon used on crash barriers too.

[dennis]

Reading about the Carboniferous Period doesn't change the physical process so it is irrelevant. I have yet to see a correct posting, maybe you could point one out?

[Tim S]

David W.E. Roberts coughed up some electrons that declared:

Technically you don't have toshag the nubile ones, just the fertile ones.

Try Tonbridge or Maidstone, especially round the station...

erk!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah. Like London?

I agree. destroy london and all who live there, cut the population by

20%, in fact lest do the whole home counties and make it 30%, and plant trees. Sod it. Bang goes all that agriculture as well..oh well..

Have to live on nuts and berries I suppose.

[dennis]

I don't think there have been rain forests in London for a while, maybe never.

[geoff]

In message , David Hansen writes

No shit

releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, is releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, whether it has previously been captured or not

[geoff]

In message , Big Les Wade writes

And I thought that dennis was obtuse

We have an IMMEDIATE problem with increasing the CO2 level in the atmosphere - burning now and recapturing in 20 years time is not a viable solution

but then, whatever we (in the UK) do is going to be no more than a token gesture, anyway

Without cutting the emissions of USA, China, India, Indonesia etc, our contribution will have little effect

There really isn't a shortage of land for planting trees - we need to stop cutting them down. Of course, ocean borne flora (algae) absorb a more significant quantity of CO2

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