Re: energy alternatives

"John Ashby" <johnashby20@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"boots" <no@xxxxx> wrote in message
news:mql8n4h17vki6tirha3oer1tdgvq6n18q1@xxxxxxxxxx
Mark <blueriverday@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 18, 3:40 pm, International_Harves...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(*** Harper) wrote:
There are side effects to burning anything to make power,
whether we are burning a mountain to make electricity or a retired
dinosaur to heat our houses.

Precisely my point. That is why it is ignorant to be
burning anything.

It appears that you haven't thought that last sentence through
completely.

You're right about that.

I think it's about time to start the morning fire in our woodstove.
We burn aspen here. The stuff falls down faster than I can cut it up
and burn it.

For some, the important question would be whether it grows up faster that
you can cut and burn it.

I'm fortunate to live in the midst of what the locals call "old
growth" forest. Some of the pine and spruce trees are 100' tall and
they don't grow overnight. Aspen does grow quickly, and it's more of
a travelling vine than a tree really, so it's near impossible to tell
how old an aspen grove is because you're not sure where it begins and
ends and which is part of another plant. But it's forest, as opposed
to suburb or plain or those marvelous rolling hills in the midwest
where independent farmers used to grow their crops.

But at least burning it in a woodstove keeps the forest
floor cleaned up, gets rid of all those combustibles.

Again, some would say that a clear forest floor is an abomination, depriving
habitat for fungi, invertebrates and small plants that form the base of much
larger food chains, and reducing bio-diversity.

The last major forest fire we had nearby was the Hayman fire a few
years back. I expect that the indigenous wildlife here would prefer a
slightly neater forest floor rather than no forest at all.

Most any of the
new efficient woodstoves puts out very little particulate matter.

Particulates are, of course, not the only pollutant.

What is a pollutant and what is material reentering the ecology in
another form is arguable. When our propane heater runs the burning of
the propane releases water vapor which changes the planetary ecology
some miniscule amount. I'm not a judge of what is, or isn't, good for
the planetary ecology, on the other hand I'm unwilling to huddle under
blankets with no heat source whatsoever. The best humans can do at
this point, I think, is to subsist as unobtrusively as possible.

Given infinite electricity I'd opt for electric heating, but we're not
even on-grid nevermind able to pay for electric heating when the
outside temperatures are below 0F. I wish Tesla had, through whatever
means, solved the problem of finite electrical power; I'm convinced
it's a soluable problem and suspect he had the horsepower to solve it
if he hadn't gotten people upset. On the other hand, unlimited
electricity would certainly bring problems of its own that I (at
least) have not imagined.

Then, maybe I'm taking your statement about burning anything a bit to
literally.

Maybe. It's a very difficult area to make decisions. Well-managed bio-mass
burning should be (ecologically) very good, but it gets a bad press for
removing land from food production.

That depends on whether the land was producing food to begin with. A
hundred years ago they grew potatos hereabouts, but damn me if I can
figure out how they kept the wildlife from eating anything grown above
ground, and how they kept the moles from eating their potatos remains
a mystery to me. The easiest way to produce food here is either to
drive to the grocery or shoot a deer or elk. We shop WalMart, it's
cheaper than the other store.

Then again, you have to look at who is
behind that press. There are too many huge economic interests pumping out
(mis)information and making it difficult to get hold of the full facts.

Profit motive innit.

Apologies for any "blather". At least we're not arguing. Yet.

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