https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63089348
A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.
Drax runs Britain's biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets - which is classed as renewable energy.
The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.
[...] Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.
"It's really a shame that British taxpayers are funding this destruction with their money. Logging natural forests and converting them into pellets to be burned for electricity, that is absolutely insane," she said.
The Drax power station in Yorkshire is a converted coal plant, which now produces 12% of the UK's renewable electricity.
It has already received £6bn in green energy subsidies. Burning wood is considered green, but it is controversial among environmentalists.
[...] Drax's own responsible sourcing policy says it "will avoid damage or disturbance" to primary and old-growth forest.
[...] Burning wood produces more greenhouse gases than burning coal.
The electricity is classed as renewable because new trees are planted to replace the old ones and these new trees should recapture the carbon emitted by burning wood pellets.
But recapturing the carbon takes decades and the off-setting can only work if the pellets are made with wood from sustainable sources.
Primary forests, which have never been logged before and store vast quantities of carbon, are not considered a sustainable source. It is highly unlikely that replanted trees will ever hold as much carbon as the old forest.
[...] Drax later admitted that it did use logs from the forest to make wood pellets. The company said they were species the timber industry did not want, and they would often be burned anyway to reduce wildfire risks.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:25PM
TFA makes a big deal about:
> some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.
What would it look like if the wood came from primary forests in Russia, or in Brazil?
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:25PM (3 children)
When will the Brits ever learn?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax [wikipedia.org]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Funny) by looorg on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:37PM
If you are going to make a cultural reference you should at least have gone with the Four Yorkshiremen. I'm sure that can quickly be converted to be about "Green" power, oh you kids had it easy, when I was young we had to get up at 3am and dig our own coal half an hour before we went to bed ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen_sketch [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1mGoLDRbc [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:51PM
Drax, also known as Drax the Destroyer
---https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_(Marvel_Cinematic_Universe)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 04 2022, @10:49PM
When Russians take over the island and establish brands such as bistro (means quickly - food and whores - in Russian).
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sjolfr on Tuesday October 04 2022, @09:40PM (4 children)
This is a good lesson in the realities of "green" energy, and any other technology, that we want to use. There are costs spread throughout all of the steps/processes between where the energy exists, is stored, to where the energy needs to be so that we can use it.
Seriously; wood pellets from Canada to fuel a power-plant in the UK is down-right stupid. Unless, of course, you consider the subsidies that get paid out.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 04 2022, @10:03PM (2 children)
Nothing is really "green" unless it's mined in Australia or Africa, shipped to China, processed, shipped to Brazil or Vietnam for assembly, shipped back to China for finishing touches, then shipped again to warehouses around the world, waiting to be shipped yet again to Hoboken, New Jersey. In an ideal green world, every end product has circumnavigated the world six time or more, before the end customer gets it.
/sarcasm
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday October 04 2022, @11:09PM (1 child)
If we are to remove /sarcasm the issue is quite simple. Our economy needs cheap commodities. Cheap commodities are bad for the environment. Want to help the planet? Make commodities expensive. Side effect? Russia will rule the world.
That's the whole issue of democrats/republican politics.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @11:25PM
> Russia will rule the world.
Maybe. Meanwhile, who will rule Russia? Over in the Journals there is an interesting discussion on what happens post-Putin.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 05 2022, @02:54AM
And those forests aren't going to regrow anywhere near fast enough to be "sustainable" so it's a very short term fix. What do you burn once you've clearcut all the forests? After a few iterations, how do you replace nutrients in the soil that were carried away with the wood?
Spherically stupid.
.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @11:20PM (41 children)
This is one of my pet peeves. The environmentalist movement has gone absolutely off its rocker when it comes to carbon, and that has consequences. This is one of them.
In the ancient times, BC (Before Carbon), no environmentalist in his right mind would have advocated any kind of clear-cutting and shipping wood across oceans. It's a folly with obvious deleterious local impacts.
Now being "green" is so much about CO2 that anything that can be fit in to the paradigm, *will* be fit in. So yes, technically wood burning is carbon neutral and sustainable because for eons there were wood lots, and copicing, and fire places and later wood stoves and it really didn't emit that much or destroy that much.
So some people took that and finagled it in to mass industrial wood cutting, processing, shipping and burning which is NOTHING like artisanal wood burning from ancient times and that thing that facilitates this nonsense is the obsession with CO2.
And no, I'm not saying that CO2 emission is not a problem--just that it's become a huge distraction from other things that are much more straightforward and not quite so easy to manipulate.
Now let's go strip mine an entire valley to produce some minerals for electric cars, because it'll reduce CO2 emissions. Let's *not* remove a dam and restore salmon habitat. It'll reduce CO2 emissions, etc., etc.
Yes, we need to get away from fossil fuels; but we need to do it the right way. We need to do it without throwing BC environmentalism under the bus, because BC there were a lot of important issues being addressed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @12:33AM (2 children)
Nice rant.
fwif, I'm not letting anyone cut the trees on my 110 acres of NE USA forest (it was originally marginal farmland). I'm just socking away all that carbon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2022, @12:37AM
fwif / fwiw
(Score: 2) by optotronic on Wednesday October 05 2022, @01:57AM
As a Terran, I thank you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Wednesday October 05 2022, @02:09AM (36 children)
Don't blame environmentalists for this. This kind of stunt comes from the business community. The environmentalists say "Business needs to stop burning fossil fuels." Business says "OK. We'll burn something renewable." Same thing with ethanol. The environmentalists did not say "Burn something else." The environmentalists want solar and wind power. Business wants to make money and often have a complete disregard to whether they benefit society.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:08AM
Some environmentalists want to run the world on magic and happy thoughts. If they really cared they'd be out demonstrating for more nuke power, and research into thorium plants and the batteries necessary to make solar and wind viable.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:17AM (31 children)
>Business wants to make money and often have a complete disregard to whether they benefit society.
Core issue with capitalism: business doesn't want to make money, business absolutely must make money to survive. Therefore only businesses that do make money (philanthropy is also a business, one with an inherently limited income stream) survive and thrive.
Throw in unregulated competition, and making money isn't just a need, it's an absolute imperative for self defense against the competition.
Oh, and being a good corporate citizen can help you in the marketplace, though not as much as a 5% price discount vs the competition.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @12:46AM (30 children)
Why would we do that when this competition is heavily regulated?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2022, @01:54AM (29 children)
>heavily regulated?
In some places, in some ways, yes. In the ways that discourage most businesses from exploiting non-renewable resources to make a quick buck, making a huge environmental mess and then declaring bankruptcy when all the principals have been paid off, etc. not so much.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @04:05AM (28 children)
Why don't we discuss some examples? I'll note that the greatest example of the last couple of decades, Deepwater Horizon, resulted in a massive charge against the principal. They didn't get away with that one weird bankruptcy trick.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2022, @10:01AM (4 children)
Start with EPA superfund sites, check the background of how they came to be, the majority were trying to run some kind of profitable business:
https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live [epa.gov]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @12:59PM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @01:31PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2022, @08:44PM (1 child)
Wait, outrage today about Superfund punishing the owners of toxic waste sites, owners who came into possession of this land at often dramatically reduced prices due to the contamination, but they bear no responsibility for the land they purchased, or do we ignore it because the program started 50 years ago, I'm confused.
Also confused: the children who grew up with toxic lead levels in their household well water because some dipshit started a "battery recycling business" 5 miles from their home.
The contaminated sites continue to impact surrounding land, even here 50 years later, but we should just ignore them? Gotcha. Your position is quite clear.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @12:49AM
Doesn't take much to confuse you, does it? Given that you aren't actually discussing any real problems with my argument, I don't see the need to comment further.
How many kids lives is that worth? Superfund destroys lives too.
How about we do something sensible instead? Huge costs and delays, and repeated attempts to punish innocent parties. And I don't buy that someone with your "confusion" would know what is "quite clear".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2022, @10:30AM (22 children)
As for BP, the "massive" $4B charge barely covers their impact to just the fishing industry alone:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11605-7_33#:~:text=Results%20indicate%20that%20the%20total,value%20added%20or%20gross%20regional [springer.com]
And as "penalties" go, $4B is 25 days of operating profit for BP, not gross income, but profit. Compare the fine with a local mechanic shop which has $100k in annual income and $90k in taxes and expenses, that would be like a $685 fine for "accidentally" dumping their used motor oil in the local river and causing $700 in demonstrated damages to a local fisherman. Hardly the kind of penalty that make other mechanics take notice and stop playing fast and loose with their toxic waste.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @01:02PM (21 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 06 2022, @08:54PM (20 children)
384 days of profit, like a $11K fine for the asshole who "accidentally" lets a 55 gallon drum of used motor oil fall off his truck into the local river... cry me a fucking river, if they can't operate their business with more care and respect for their impact on others (including the environment), they should be OUT of business and anyone in BP management in any way involved whatsoever with the management of Deepwater Horizon should be BANNED from employment in anything related to the oil industry in the future, until death.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @12:57AM (19 children)
Sounds serious to me. Those would otherwise be record profits, right? And if BP keeps doing that, they'll keep losing years of income.
Do you really think anyone who caused that kind of loss for BP will continue to be allowed to do that for any oil industry employer?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 07 2022, @10:30AM (18 children)
>Do you really think anyone who caused that kind of loss for BP will continue to be allowed to do that for any oil industry employer?
Absolutely, I would bet that every single manager not specifically spotlighted by the press, and many who were, are still employed not only in the industry, but by BP.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @01:25PM (17 children)
Does that set have any members in it?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 07 2022, @02:07PM (16 children)
>Does that set have any members in it?
Let's see [google.com]:
Donald Vidrine, First, if this is true:
>the most conservative and risk adverse company man they had ever known
then what are the rest like?
sentenced to 10 months probation, now dead at age 69.
-----
Bob Kaluza, press spotlight result #2: apparently working in the drilling industry for the last 3 years:
Independent Drilling and Workover Supervisor
Feb 2019 - Present 3 years 9 months
-----
Jimmy Harrell, result #3, now dead at age 65.
-----
Tangential, but common sense reaffirming tidbit seen along the way:
Other big oil companies did not provide much support; their executives, most of whom never liked the British firm and its longtime chairman John Browne, disparaged BP and said it was an outlier when it came to safety. In fact, almost every company had its own disaster: Chevron had a gas well that burned uncontrollably for months; Shell had trouble keeping its pipelines safe from insurgents in Nigeria’s restive delta; a Thai-owned rig spilled oil off the coast of Australia for 74 days.
"The rest of the industry tried to paint BP as the black, noncompliant sheep of the Big Oil family," Bromwich said. "That was its way of arguing that company-specific rather than industry-wide reforms were called for. We disagreed with that line of argument, and independent studies exposed it as nonsense."
-----
The problem with finding management out of the press spotlight, is of course that they not only haven't been spotlighted, but no doubt seek to keep a low profile. The "contractor" shell game also comes strongly into play:
>report concluded that BP, as the well’s owner, was ultimately responsible for the accident. But it also said that BP’s chief contractors, Transocean, which owned the mobile drilling rig, and Halliburton, which was responsible for the cementing operations, shared the blame for many of the fatal mistakes.
I have no illusions of changing your stated stance, on anything. For myself, I have never known industry to oust bad leaders, poor decision makers, excessive risk takers - they tend to get lateraled somewhere out of the spotlight, and when they want somebody who will sign off on taking risk to make a profit, they haul them out again - whether in the same company, or somewhere else in the same industry.
The two spotlighted guys dead before 70, though, smells like oily day old fish from the Gulf, if you think about it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @02:24PM (15 children)
So wasted six years, but guilty of nothing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 07 2022, @06:26PM (14 children)
BP 60K employees, Haliburton 42K employees, TransOcean 6.6K employees - those aren't imaginary numbers.
At those numbers, there will be 6+ layers of management above the workers on the rig who got killed, and multiple departments overseeing various aspects of the operations.
If you think they hauled all the potentially responsible parties into court, found them "innocent" and assumed all of their management was also "innocent", well then, I guess we just have to let the whole industrial world run however they please with no culpability for anything they do. Accidents happen, gotta accept 'em, business knows best right?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @08:29PM (13 children)
I find it interesting how we went from a legit discussion of the significant disincentives to massive pollution to JoeMerchant's ridiculous sense of justice. So what that certain people didn't get punished as much as you like? BP won't do that again - because running a safer operation hurts less.
I'm sure there's a decent third way we could find, if we just ignored the false dilemma of the JoeMerchant peanut gallery! Like maybe the present - where a big, multinational company lost more than a year's profit on an itty bitty oil well.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 07 2022, @08:44PM (12 children)
>BP won't do that again - because running a safer operation hurts less.
That is the best argument for keeping the "experienced" staff on, but in an industry with a long history of successively bigger accidental disasters just saying they learned their lesson with a loss of one year's profit is naive and inviting a bigger one next time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @10:51PM (11 children)
What long history? My take is that this is at best merely confirmation bias. We would expect to see bigger disasters even in an industry with no such bias. Even in the complete absence of any such tendency, when you have N years of history, the next year will have a 1 in N+1 chance of a biggest event so far.
And that ignores that the biggest such oil spill disaster happened [wikipedia.org] in 1911. Looking at a list of oil spills [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia and sorting them by size, I find that only one of the top 10 (because I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this), Deepwater Horizon happened this century. That indicates to me that we aren't seeing a history of successively bigger accidental disasters in the first place.
Once again, reality has unfairly taken away the bug paste utopia [soylentnews.org]!
The takeaway here should be that these narratives are seductive, green Calvinism - feeling good because there are inferior, wicked humans out there somewhere. But they don't fare well when you rub them against some reality. In practice, when we have to do with real problems, we do so with relatively low drama, usually some combination of standards, regulation, and inspection - Superfund being a notable exception because of its considerable flaws and reliance on pushing so much through courtrooms.
That's why I emphasize evidence-based argument and cost-benefit analysis. Appeals to emotion may get you what you want today, but they're unsustainable in the long run. But if we can show there's a huge problem and present rational mitigation and adaptation strategies, both that make sense, we won't have excuses to decry the perfidy and greed of the human animal. That may be less appealing to the religious fanatic, but it's better for everyone else - and the environment too.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @01:04AM (10 children)
Exxon Valdez was ecologically significant but remote DWH was in your face close to the Gulf Coast, much more people directly affected than anything else in US history, I personally experienced oil foam on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale, carried through the Florida Keys and up the East coast...
The list of major oil disasters is long and can't get shorter, but we will eventually run out of planet to spill oil on, in your logical progression of "the industry safety implementation is just fine.". All the worse when the political pendulum periodically erases gains made in safety requirements.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:23AM (9 children)
Your feels about the accident are quite irrelevant. You made a claim - it turned out wrong. Now goalposts are being moved.
Sure, we'll run out of planet in half a billion years (unless someone moves Earth away from the Sun) and it won't be due to oil spills. My logical progression is to note the obvious - that your claim of an alleged trend towards bigger accidents was completely out of touch with reality. And the political pendulum will swing back every time there's another accident. It's the nature of human society that risk takers push the envelope. With consequences like what happened to BP, they won't push far.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:04PM (2 children)
Enjoy your future:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/04/15/usf-researchers-sampled-more-than-2000-fish-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-they-found-oil-pollution-in-every-one/ [tampabay.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:30PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:19PM
Levels around the poorly capped wildcatter rigs are so high the fillets smell and taste bad. Source: offshore fishing from Galveston with locals.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:10PM (5 children)
> the discharge of oil after the rig sunk was seven times greater than the yearly leakage from natural seeps — in just 87 days
Elevating the oil contamination of the entire Gulf of Mexico by a factor of 29x, from one, as you said "tiny little well" while it ran unchecked.
Not to mention the ongoing disaster of poorly capped wildcatter rigs dotted all over the Texas-Louisiana coast, business as usual spills, etc. which - in total - do far exceed the impact of DWH in the longer term.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:34PM (4 children)
Oh really? Then there must be some pretty impressive natural consumption of oil. Further, it's been 12 years since. Plenty of de-elevating of that oil contamination has happened since.
You ever come up with a real problem in this area, you let us know!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:27PM (3 children)
You want an example of how a contaminated water body "deals with" the problem, try investigating the Miami River. Toxins settled in the sediments, and now it is closed to all but shallow draft vessels because dredging the channel would re-release the toxins and re-kill Biscayne Bay. Same thing is happening all over the Gulf, petroleum that used to be buried thousands of feet in concentrated pockets is being distributed across the bottom with inches or less of cover.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @05:25PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @07:06PM (1 child)
>we now have substantial regulation in place to prevent or greatly reduce the very sort of thing you repeated describe in this discussion. When abuses occur, regulation is created and enforced.
2009-2016 that was the case, then 2017-2020 that regulation was repealed, virtually arbitrarily, and as fast as the administration could do it. The US is schizophrenic in terms of environmental protection, and that's a shitty way to manage resources that can be damaged long term and/or lost forever.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @11:24PM
Show there's a problem. Keep in mind that the Obama administration was blocking almost all new oil drilling, indicating that regulation had reached an excess. I see no sign that Trump hadn't merely rolled that back to a reasonable level.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 06 2022, @12:44AM (2 children)
There's a standard economics label for this phenomena: unintended consequences.
They didn't have to. Those policy incentives were enough.
Here, the "green energy" subsidies provided the incentive. If they had to provide a product that people actually wanted, it would benefit someone - possibly society too.
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday October 06 2022, @03:57PM (1 child)
Here we get to the heart of the matter. In order to get the policy incentives they want enacted as law, environmentalists wind up making compromises with business. Environmental protection bills always wind up having some subsidy for ethanol or "clean coal" or some other bullshit, because that is what it takes to get the bill passed. But I don't blame the environmentalists for that. They wanted to get some environmental protection, and the price of doing that is some greenwashing. But never think that the environmentalists couldn't tell the difference. They were just willing to pay the price.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 07 2022, @12:39AM
Indeed, but that's a symptom of a law that doesn't have inherent value. You don't have to throw out a lot of bones unless the bill in question is weakly supported by the public. Here, though the policies themselves were the problem.
Sorry, don't buy that. Silly laws with large pork components are a symptom of a large voter faction that can't tell the difference.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:36PM
I have always opposed clear cutting the way they used to do it, but modern practices have moved toward leaving enough cover to prevent disastrous erosion. If you do that, forests recover well and faster than people realize. There are places in New Hampshire that were clear cut the old-fashioned way in the 50's and 60's and you can't tell the difference today between it and supposed old-growth forests. If you leave islands of forest untouched then harvested areas can be quickly re-colonized by flora and fauna.
What harvested forest does not spring back from is being paved over and turned into suburban sprawl. That's a loss of habitat.
Still, the Earth is really huge, and even with all the billions of us out there most of it is uninhabited. Take Canada: it's the second largest country in the world by area and there are a scant 35 million people in it. It's empty, with plenty of forest.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:22AM (8 children)
I have a very large garden by UK standards, about an acre (half a hectare). It is semi-wooded with about 20 large trees and numerous small ones. Over the last 10 years three large ones have blown down, some saplings are growing up, and sometimes a large branch drops off. It is in a natural steady state.
I have a wood burner and I burn everything that comes down. I spend a lot of time chainsawing and chopping up logs into firewood. I have literally tons of logs stored in a corner of the garden, and about one ton inside a greenhouse drying out through summer.
For all that, it supplies only enough for my one fire for about two hours each night in winter. The idea that burning wood is a sustainable and viable source of energy for a large population, in a nearly treeless world, is ludicrous. The urban "environmentalists" who advocate it must know nothing about either trees or arithmetic.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:20AM
>urban "environmentalists" who advocate it must know nothing about either trees or arithmetic.
Neither biology nor mathematics is a prerequisite for politics or psychology. Thinking about it, people who pursue politics and psychology seem to be mostly the ones who struggle in math and science.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:31AM (6 children)
We also have a treed acre, but what we don't have is an indoor fireplace. We burn our downed branches, sticks and moss in an outdoor pit, and when we get serious about it we might combust 15-20 good heating hours per year from the tree fall material.
However, we also keep a couple of brush piles which make good wildlife habitat, and rich compost for the trees they are near.
What does make more heat in our fire pit? Cardboard shipping boxes. With a small home and ordering consumables in bulk, you might meet all your heating needs from on-site burning of the packaging, though if everyone did it I'm sure too much Styrofoam, plastic and tape would end up getting burned with the cardboard leading to a nasty pollution problem.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday October 05 2022, @12:00PM (3 children)
We burn card at home or use it as compost liner. It makes far less heat than logs; at some approximation energy stored is proportional to mass and packing material is too low mass compared to a branch.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @12:56PM (2 children)
But the heat it does release comes all at once... I feel like a purpose built cardboard stove could heat pretty well - most of our cardboard heat from the open pit is just "gone in a flash".
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:24PM (1 child)
I shred waste paper and cardboard and use it as mulch, but I've seen people wet it, pour it into a mold as a slurry, and press it into logs that they burn once they have dried. One guy said he did it with old coffee grounds that smelled quite pleasant when burned (seemed to me you'd have to be one hell of a prodigious coffee drinker, but it sounded good).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:08PM
It basically comes down to mass, whether it's paper or wood it's got a relatively similar energy density. Now, in old growth oak form it definitely burns slower than cardboard boxes ;-)
Also, I suppose sap is worth a mention too - not that it's terribly friendly to indoor burning systems, but sap does carry a bit more energy per pound than the cellulose.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:20PM (1 child)
If you have downed branches and such that's not enough to heat your home, another good use for it is to convert it to charcoal and mix it in with your garden soil to make terra preta. The porous charcoal harbors beneficial bacteria that render the soil much more fertile.
I have read other people use their waste wood to grow mushrooms. I haven't managed to get it to work yet, but you might have more luck.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 05 2022, @10:06PM
Mushrooms are somewhat mysterious... I had a lot of swamp behind my home for a few years, tried shitake plugs in many downed trees of various ages out there, had dismal results. Couple of years later I was talking with a "pro" mushroom farmer and he commented that the year I had tried was a terrible year for all the growers but he was not sure why.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 05 2022, @09:13PM
The pine beetle has killed millions of acres of pine forest [rcinet.ca] in North America. They should make their wood pellets out of those trees instead of cutting down healthy forest.
Washington DC delenda est.