Burning Pallets, Battens and More in Wood Burner?

Apodemus

Maxson said:

How about letting that woodland keep growing naturally and leaving the fallen wood there to become part of the forest floor, making useful habitat and eventually storing carbon underground? That's how fossil fuels got underground and that's a way to put the carbon back there from the atmosphere, using trees.

In practice, very little of the fallen organic matter in a forest remains as long-term carbon in the ground.  The conditions in which the paleozoic forests lived and died were completely different from what we have in an anthropocene forest.  And if burning a kW of wood saves me burning a kW of oil, the carbon cycle time is much shorter - by a factor of about 5 million!

Maxson

Apodemus said:

Maxson said:

How about letting that woodland keep growing naturally and leaving the fallen wood there to become part of the forest floor, making useful habitat and eventually storing carbon underground? That's how fossil fuels got underground and that's a way to put the carbon back there from the atmosphere, using trees.

In practice, very little of the fallen organic matter in a forest remains as long-term carbon in the ground.  The conditions in which the paleozoic forests lived and died were completely different from what we have in an anthropocene forest.  And if burning a kW of wood saves me burning a kW of oil, the carbon cycle time is much shorter - by a factor of about 5 million!

I was just daydreaming about how we get all that carbon from the atmosphere back under the ground while having natural forest for people and wildlife to enjoy. I have no facts or figures for my daydream and I would have thought the question mark and words 'How about' would have framed it as a proposal rather than a fully worked out plan for the world. Just imagining!

Imagine if we grew trees just to make huge piles of wood to then cover with some inert waste as a way of storing carbon. Would that even work? I think just a forest allowed to grow naturally would be nicer. I find one species forestry for wood production somewhat sterile and unnatural although it is at least better than no trees in the way that an oil palm grove is better than an open cast mine.

When I look out of my window and see people taking wood from the woods it just feels wrong to me. Even piles of wood that have been left on purpose to make habitat for wildlife. Just a feeling, I've made no data or calculations on what puts the least carbon out overall, burning gas or burning 'sustainable' wood. Too complex. Does anyone take into account the fossil fuels used cutting down, processing and transporting the wood? Also in my experience it seems like most houses with wood burners seem way too hot indoors, like 25 degrees, wasting most of the heat from the wood that makes it inside the room. Then you have the lion's share of the heat going straight up the flue with no heat exchanger to reclaim that unlike a modern gas boiler. Not that gas boilers are necessarily 'good' for the world, just much more efficient than most wood burners.

Maxson

Woolsery said:

Maxson said:

Woolsery said:

Maxson said:

  As a developed nation we should lead by example. A good example would be to re-forest large areas of land. Cutting down trees to burn them in pretty log burners is probably not setting a good example, let alone burning coal.

Do you really think China, India and the other BRICS nations are waiting for us to lead them into a world of enlightenment? If so, its not going very well, especially with the sanctions we're imposing on one of the group forging stronger alliances between them. 

How about letting that woodland keep growing naturally and leaving the fallen wood there to become part of the forest floor, making useful habitat and eventually storing carbon underground? That's how fossil fuels got underground and that's a way to put the carbon back there from the atmosphere, using trees.

Seem to have strayed pretty far from the original topic now!

If we've strayed, it's because of your inaccurate assertions. Now you're telling us we ought to leave woodland untouched and unmanaged  for millions of years so that fallen wood becomes stored carbon like the forests of dinosaur times!

Do you not consider the process of photosynthesis more immediately valuable in converting carbon dioxide to oxygen? If you do, then giving those who own woodland, or who might plant woodland, more incentive to keep and manage it properly would seem the way to go. I didn't plant a few hundred trees because I wanted to make coal!

If you're using your own land to grow sustainable fuel then that's seems pretty admirable and hard to argue against. Coppicing hazel or IDK, beech is an excellent way of producing wood while providing habitat and food for wildlife and even hazelnuts for humans to eat. If you had some land to just let be a forest as well that would be awesome. Most of us don't have the land to even dream of doing that of course.

You're right if you're saying that I don't have all the facts, just my own opinions and ideas.

Apodemus

Maxson said:

Woolsery said:

Maxson said:

Woolsery said:

Maxson said:

  As a developed nation we should lead by example. A good example would be to re-forest large areas of land. Cutting down trees to burn them in pretty log burners is probably not setting a good example, let alone burning coal.

Do you really think China, India and the other BRICS nations are waiting for us to lead them into a world of enlightenment? If so, its not going very well, especially with the sanctions we're imposing on one of the group forging stronger alliances between them. 

How about letting that woodland keep growing naturally and leaving the fallen wood there to become part of the forest floor, making useful habitat and eventually storing carbon underground? That's how fossil fuels got underground and that's a way to put the carbon back there from the atmosphere, using trees.

Seem to have strayed pretty far from the original topic now!

If we've strayed, it's because of your inaccurate assertions. Now you're telling us we ought to leave woodland untouched and unmanaged  for millions of years so that fallen wood becomes stored carbon like the forests of dinosaur times!

Do you not consider the process of photosynthesis more immediately valuable in converting carbon dioxide to oxygen? If you do, then giving those who own woodland, or who might plant woodland, more incentive to keep and manage it properly would seem the way to go. I didn't plant a few hundred trees because I wanted to make coal!

If you're using your own land to grow sustainable fuel then that's seems pretty admirable and hard to argue against. Coppicing hazel or IDK, beech is an excellent way of producing wood while providing habitat and food for wildlife and even hazelnuts for humans to eat. If you had some land to just let be a forest as well that would be awesome. Most of us don't have the land to even dream of doing that of course.

You're right if you're saying that I don't have all the facts, just my own opinions and ideas.

You are perfectly entitled to your own opinions and ideas (and to daydream!), but these will carry much more weight if you take the time to learn  some facts to back them up! 

In today's world, most fallen vegetation will eventually decay and the carbon will  be returned to the atmosphere - very small amounts will become locked up in long-lived humic acids etc in deep soil.  It was different back in the carboniferous.  If I burn a kW of oil (or gas), it represents carbon that was locked down in sediments 300 million years ago and is essentially a new addition to the world's circulating carbon in the environment.  If I burn a kW of wood, I am returning carbon that was removed from the environment over the life of the tree - perhaps 60 or 70 years.  It will be removed again from the environment over the life of the next tree.  If I didn't burn it and it rotted on the forest floor, the carbon would return to the environment over the next five to ten years, again to be removed by the next tree.

You have a point in terms of the wildlife benefits of natural forests versus managed forests and we must enure that there is room for both.  But the constant introduction of fossil carbon into today's environment is by far the bigger issue.

Ectophile

Maxson said:

I was just daydreaming about how we get all that carbon from the atmosphere back under the ground while having natural forest for people and wildlife to enjoy. I have no facts or figures for my daydream and I would have thought the question mark and words 'How about' would have framed it as a proposal rather than a fully worked out plan for the world. Just imagining!

Imagine if we grew trees just to make huge piles of wood to then cover with some inert waste as a way of storing carbon. Would that even work? I think just a forest allowed to grow naturally would be nicer. I find one species forestry for wood production somewhat sterile and unnatural although it is at least better than no trees in the way that an oil palm grove is better than an open cast mine.

One viable approach is to chop down trees in a sustainable way - a block of trees here and a block there, allowing time for them to regenerate again.

Then convert the wood to "biochar".  That's a fancy name for failed charcoal, where the wood doesn't burn properly.

Then sell the biochar as a soil improver.  Because it's semi-burned, it rots very slowly, but it helps break up heavy soils.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Maxson said:

Apodemus said:

Maxson said:

How about letting that woodland keep growing naturally and leaving the fallen wood there to become part of the forest floor, making useful habitat and eventually storing carbon underground? That's how fossil fuels got underground and that's a way to put the carbon back there from the atmosphere, using trees.

In practice, very little of the fallen organic matter in a forest remains as long-term carbon in the ground.  The conditions in which the paleozoic forests lived and died were completely different from what we have in an anthropocene forest.  And if burning a kW of wood saves me burning a kW of oil, the carbon cycle time is much shorter - by a factor of about 5 million!

When I look out of my window and see people taking wood from the woods it just feels wrong to me. Even piles of wood that have been left on purpose to make habitat for wildlife. 

You could always contact the owner of the woods to raise your concerns, if it's council owned they probably won't be happy with people taking material for firewood, if it's privately owned and the owners are setting up wildlife habitats that are being taken they probably won't be happy either.