Trees grow back, oil doesn't

You can also burn small animals up to 35 lbs in a woodstove. Just sayin'

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

THIS infinity+1.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

there are 6 billion people on the planet. trees take a long time to grow back. if we all used wood, the world would be rapidly denuded and would look like haiti

Good: Trees grow back
Bad: Burning wood releases lots of carbon

Environmentalists might want to thing that one all the way through.

More than 20 years of experience in the timber business has convinced me that there are very few things that "environmentalists" think through.

I am in the timber (Link (new window) ) industry and the wood pellet (Link (new window)) business so I am getting a kick out of this thread.

what_now: All. Summer. Long.

You would have been better off getting a job and using the money to buy wood fromesomeone who has a competitive advantage at producing firewood.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

Sure it does. Just not as fast.

/if you call recreate 'grow' anyway

If I lived up north I think I would have one of these.

Central Boiler

I'll admit as a native Florida boy I don't know much about winter heating, but it seems from reading about them they are fairly efficient and wood is a renewable fuel.

And I was just considering upgrading my wood stove this year.

I'm not an 'environmentalist', but I do see two issues that often get confused in this sort of debate:

1) Yes, TREES are a renewable resource.

2) HABITATS that some of these trees are not as quickly or as easily 'renewable'.

Explanations
#1) Harvesting and replanting tree farms on a rotating basis makes perfect sense. Perhaps do it in clear-cut swaths leaving some forest in-between for the furry animals to flee to. This option is entirely do-able with sufficient planning (knowing that your ROE will be a 10-20 year horizon before you can harvest).

#2) However, deciding that an ancient stand of rare native trees along with rare native ecosystem would be better as end-tables does make sense in any way, given the options available in #1.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't


QFT. Now if we can get the hippies that tie themselves to trees to accept that...

I have a wood stove in my living room, I'm getting a kick from these replies.

/Time to start stock'n up the wood!

I've heated with wood for a long time. Here's what the yuppies never consider: heating with wood is HARD WORK. Cutting, splitting and stacking hardwood from October to December (for next year's fire) will give you some real consideration for the people who did it all year long during the colonial era. Not to mention the bruises, cuts, scrapes and sprains. And the occasional copperhead.

That's why there's always a spike in woodstove sales in times like these and a few years later you'll start seeing "free woodstove" ads as people just want to get the dirty things out of their living rooms.

/did learn how to use an axe properly
//and a maul
///Stihl FTW

I heat with wood exclusivly. Costs $600. for a log load and that lasts about two years. But it is year-round work cutting, splitting, stacking and then finally bringing it into the house to burn. The trees will be here alot longer than I will..... No kids, no concerns about yours.

the parents have a big wood stove in their basement... it really cuts down on their fuel oil consumption during the winter. and many farmers give away free firewood in our area whenever they have a tree fall down in a storm.

This thread gives me wood, but only because of the use of the word "denuded".

Mr Logo: You would have been better off getting a job and using the money to buy wood fromesomeone who has a competitive advantage at producing firewood.

No shiat. But the poor do dumb things. I used to do dumb shiat like that...and saved myself about 1$ per hour of work.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

Good thought, however when the demand takes out tree's faster than we can plant them....then we have a problem.

friendinpa: he wood pellet (Link (new window)) business so I am getting a kick out of this thread.

I've had both a pellet stove and a wood stove and if you are in the market for an alternative heat source stay the fark away from the pellet stoves, the companies just rape you the same as the other energy companies do and the heat they cast is nothing compared to an iron box with a burning log in it. Not to mention if your power goes out so doesn't your pellet stove. wood stove FTW!

Don't forget most of the electricity produced in the us is from coal

labman: GaryPDX: Pallets are generally untreated hardwood (oak mostly). I use them to make charcoal for my forge. FYI

I'm sure the pallets by themselves are fine. I was thinking of pallets that have had chemicals spilled on them. I know I've seen some that had all kinds of goop on them and I would be scared to burn those.

Exactly. Plus these chemicals could tar up the flute or pipe, causing it to eventually to catch fire.

albo: there are 6 billion people on the planet.

I don't think they all need heat.

lol...who the fark calls themselves an environmentalist anyway? Do you have to get a license or take a class?

I grew up with a wood stove as the primary source of heat in our home. Sundays were spent cutting, hauling, and stacking wood. Weekdays were spent splitting and carrying wood indoors to further dry out next to the stove. Whenever I'm looking at houses and I see a fireplace I literally see labor. I don't find them appealing in the least.

Anyway, you don't cut down live trees for burning, you use dead trees. Live trees are too wet and take forever to dry. Besides, there's pleny of dead wood around.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

If you think 300 million people can sustainably meet their energy needs burning trees, you're just not grasping the scale of the problem.

Oh, and BTW, this is one of the first signs of the beginning deindustrialization of the world. The tip of the iceberg is now clearly visible. This sounds almost cozy and kind of nice in a back-to-basics kind of way, but as deindustrialization accelerates, things are liable to get rather grim.

Congratulations, folks, you've seen the peak. Good times, man. Good times.

Either a wood burning insert for my regular fireplace, or woodburning stove for our sunroom. It's much cheaper than electric baseboard heaters. There are epa certified stoves now, which are much easier on the emissions, though still not as efficient as a gas stove would be (but the gas stove would be more expensive). Plus, I have about 6 cords of wood I chopped...a neighbor cut down a tree, and I took the wood.

How we do it in the streets.

what_now: I grew up with a wood stove as my only source of heat, and let me tell you, it's not all chopping trees. We went around picking up the shipping pallets that stores throw away, breaking them up w/ a crowbar, and then cutting them into planks.

All. Summer. Long.

So, yeah. I was more environmentally friendly, because those pallets would have been trashed.

/grew up poor
//chopped my fair amount of trees as well
///will NEVER do it again
\ not poor anymore
\\rich in slashies!!

Me too. Never doing that again either. Programmable thermostat FTW!

I can't drive to work on a wood stove.

wood or oil? depends.



\again
\\just because i like it

Remember, keep your wood pile 30 yards from the house. Stack that shiat on the porch and you've got TERMITES!

In my dumpsterin' days I would find enough wood in pallet, trimmed yard waste, and construction waste form I could have filled a pickup every night. All that shiat is going into landfills in every city of the US. Ending up "like Haiti" is a little more complicated than "we all got wood stoves."

/TERMITES!

patrick767: Good: Trees grow back
Bad: Burning wood releases lots of carbon

Good: growing trees absorb lots of carbon

Seriously, is it that hard for people to remember that there are carbon cycles, and that raising grasses or trees for fuel is better than digging coal or drilling oil for fuel? That raising grass for fuel reclaims carbon from the atmosphere over a few months, raising trees for fuel reclaims it over a few decades, but "raising" more coal or oil takes tens of millions of years?

atlanta_ufo: labman: GaryPDX: Pallets are generally untreated hardwood (oak mostly). I use them to make charcoal for my forge. FYI

I'm sure the pallets by themselves are fine. I was thinking of pallets that have had chemicals spilled on them. I know I've seen some that had all kinds of goop on them and I would be scared to burn those.

Exactly. Plus these chemicals could tar up the flute or pipe, causing it to eventually to catch fire.

All wood will do that. Especially softwoods like pine and boxelder. You need to clean it out every year regardless.

Trees are a crop, like corn or potatoes. You hardly ever hear ethanol detractors complaining about the denuding of corn fields. Trees are carbon neutral. Sure, burning them releases carbon, but its the same carbon they removed from the environment; oil releases carbon that was removed a bajillion years ago, and the rocks don't re-absorb it as new oil grows at quite the same rate.

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't
Both will replenish... you're just narrowly thinking of a tiny insignificant slice of geological time, the little "blip" of time that homo sapiens have infested the planet. I fully expect the human race will be extinguished within a few thousand years at most.

\Just hoping it's not a few tens of years.

binnster: I can't drive to work on a wood stove

just get yourself one of these:

Harvey Birdman: Trees grow back, oil doesn't

Then why should I be worried about them cutting down a Rain Forest? Its gonna grow back