Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Man you really sound mad at something but I'm not taking on your drama. Go make a mountain out of a molehill with someone else. Never complained about anything or said a twig burning stove was bad. A poster said using one was carbon neutral and I said (while the impact may be minimal) one can't say it's neutral. From there the discussion took some twists and turns but at each one I think I was pretty clear that I did not think a twig stove was bad nor did I complain about one. Just discussing terminology.
Perhaps you need to read your own posts. We are having a
discussion here and you have some misconceptions. I happen to have a very long history in alternative energy. It's what has paid the bills for the last 35 years. And, as such, I have a bit more insight into the issues at hand. Yes,
some people think that any carbon usage is bad but they are wrong and incorrect. Saying that all carbon usage is bad and we should stop using it is akin to saying that all food is bad and we should quit eating it. If we do, we die.
As to the poster saying that a twig stove is carbon neutral, he is close enough to being correct to make it a nonissue. It's a matter of degrees. A pound of wood puts out 2 lbs of carbon. As we are already riding bikes for long distances, we are putting out far less carbon dioxide on our trips than we would if we were driving a car. A gallon of gas releases 20 lb of carbon dioxide. And we use a gallon per about every 30 miles. As I said above, it's a drop in an ocean.
I'll also admit that wood puts out just a bit more carbon than propane when it burns because the propane is more efficient but again, it's a matter of degree. It certainly doesn't necessitate a call for bicycle tourist to pass a purity test for carbon neutrality.
Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Btw, we have large scale cottonwood woodlots all over the place here. Cottonwoods are a viable biomass crop both commercially and used on almost every farm homestead from here to Ontario as a fast growing wind break to reduce soil erosion. Too bad they didn't know they were doing it wrong.
Again, those tree plantations
probably aren't "cottonwoods". "Cottonwoods" are a group of species and subspecies of poplars. Calling them "cottonwoods" is a bit like calling dromedaries, horses, bactrains and rhinoceros "horses". They are all related but they are distinctly different.
I didn't say they were doing it "wrong" only that calling the tree used for energy crops a "cottonwood" is incorrect. We looked at growing varieties of "cottonwood" for energy crops long ago and they simply didn't work. Clever botanists bred various poplars species together to get desirable traits like faster growth and less branching. The result is "hybrid poplar" which is what are used for energy crops.