Is Burning Wood Bad for the Environment?

[Adk_dib]

I don't know if it is unhealthy, I have another question. I am reading a book right now about a forest rangers experiences. He keeps talking about gathering fire wood every night. He is not the only one doing this. Sooner or later doesn't the wood run out and people a forced to cut down tree's?

 

[--M.]

A couple other factoids:
Some cities either ban woodstoves or require catalytic models to reduce air pollution.
NH state parks ban out-of-state firewood unless kiln dried due to insect pests.

==A newspaper article referenced the problem of pellet-stoves smoking out close neighbors. In a suburban (or urban) area, having what amounts to a smoke-stack right next door seems to have unintended consequences.

==The prohibition on importing firewood has taken root across the northeast: I've seen it now in NH, VT and NY. It is indeed heartbreaking to hear of large-scale tree-felling in Worcester and other areas because of insect infestations.

 

[Little Rickie]

But the chief reasons for campfire bans are that it makes environmentalists feel good,

Isn't this really what folks get all burned up about?

Isn't it just a smoke screen for the big issues?

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

I don't know if it is unhealthy, I have another question. I am reading a book right now about a forest rangers experiences. He keeps talking about gathering fire wood every night. He is not the only one doing this. Sooner or later doesn't the wood run out and people a forced to cut down tree's?

First, superb post by Spencer; kudos.

And, yes, indeed the wood does run out, such as at the base of Kilimanjaro, where although the required guides use gas stoves in cooking for their clients, greater numbers of porters hired for each group burn wood for their own cooking and heating. Many argue that the loss of forests at lower elevations around Kili are as responsible as AGW for the demise of the higher elevation ice masses (i.e., the forests are no longer capable of holding as much moisture and clouds on the mountain as in the past).

 

[RoySwkr]

I am reading a book right now about a forest rangers experiences. He keeps talking about gathering fire wood every night. He is not the only one doing this. Sooner or later doesn't the wood run out and people a forced to cut down tree's?

Available dry wood used to be a feature of a good campsite, along with water and grass (for your horse) - if you don't like one place just move on. I used to snowshoe with a guy who would boil tea at lunch, so he'd pick a lunch spot next to a deadfall and a brook.

There is an old rule of thumb that a woodlot can produce a cord per acre per year in perpetuity, and trees are naturally dying all the time.

There is plenty of already-dead wood in the White Mtns for every visitor to have a huge campfire, the problem is that it is scattered all through the forest and not all piled next to popular campsites


We had fires every night at Baxter with no problem, we'd just find a spot along the road where plenty of dead wood was visible and fill the car.

Unfortunately there are idiot campers who hack up live trees that hardly burn anyway, they are what get campfires banned rather than a shortage of wood forestwide.

 

[A_Hike_2_Far]

Its not as bad as you may think. Burning wood puts co2 captured in the tree back into the air. But when you drive your putting a lot of new co2 into the air.

 

[Neil]

Speaking of being alive being harmful to the environment,

the average Google search puts 7 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Just one of many hits I got from a Google Search on the topic:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10140142-54.html

 

[Tim Seaver]

Campfires can be nice, but they can also be obnoxious to the point of absurdity.
I remember one particular night at Roaring Brook in Baxter, the thick canopy of trees trapping the smoke from dozens of poorly constructed "campfires" ( more like "smolder piles"). It was ridiculous, we were coughing all night and felt like crap the next day.

Campfires are fine in the right setting, but there are some places where some common sense would call for a few guidelines or limits to avoid such an unhealthy atmosphere.

 

[DougPaul]

Its not as bad as you may think. Burning wood puts co2 captured in the tree back into the air. But when you drive your putting a lot of new co2 into the air.

Depends on your time scale... Burning wood returns CO2 to the air after tens to hundreds of years. Burning fossil fuel returns CO2 to the air after millions of years.

But ultimately CO2 in the atmosphere is CO2 in the atmosphere no matter how it gets there.

Doug

 

[roadtripper]

An interesting and related-article for those actually intrigued by this topic

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/gre...ower_plants_may.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6

 

[brianW]

Depends on your time scale... Burning wood returns CO2 to the air after tens to hundreds of years. Burning fossil fuel returns CO2 to the air after millions of years.

But ultimately CO2 in the atmosphere is CO2 in the atmosphere no matter how it gets there.

Doug

yes but the carbon "captured" by plants (let it be a few weeks to a few hundred years) is already part of the carbon cycle while burning "fossil fuels" is re-introducing carbon into the cycle that was trapped thousands if not millions of years. Just like the CO2 we release is part of the carbon cycle. Should we hold our breathe to reduce CO2?

 

[TCD]

Well if we hold our breaths to reduce CO2, and hold our farts to reduce Methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), then we'll all burst, and there'll be no one here to worry about it.

 

[DougPaul]

Should we hold our breathe to reduce CO2?

Just don't exhale.
But on the bright side, you can inhale all you want...




Doug

 

[peakbagger]

To add fuel to the proverbial "fire". The largest proposed biomass power plant in the Northeast (70 MW) just signed a power purchase agreement with PSNH the major power supplier in NH.

http://nuwnotes1.nu.com/apps/mediar...733E0066786A/EAE2C8C6565AA9DA8525773D00471E5C

There is also another 28 MW power plant proposed for Berlin

http://www.cleanpowerdevelopment.us/projects.php

A large amount of the studies currently being pumped into the Massachusetts press is driven by opposition to the several proposals for biomass power plants in western Massachusetts. Depending upon the funding source, they come to wildly different conclusions. Ultimately it comes down to the boundaries of the "bubble" the study covers, societies goals and what competing alternatives were reviewed.

Currently Mass covers a large portion of the renewable power by purchasing green power from plants in NH. For the hikers who drive north on RT 16 they drive right by a plant in Tamworth(one mile off of Rt 16), Whitefield (just east of Rt 115), Bethlehem (just north of the Littleton town line) and several along I93. WIth the exception of an exhaust plume in the winter, I expect that few folks really notice them and their impacts to the whites are negligable.

 

[WhiteMTHike]

I burned some wood last night...probably why I am so sore and tired this morning.

 

[Little Rickie]

I went camping a few weeks ago, drove a total of 11 hours+ and then burned wood. I should have stayed home...and burned the wood.

 

[woodstrider]

Greener wood?

I say burn more wood when you are camping! But know how to do it.

I used to be very anti-campfire in the woods, used a stove almost all the time summer and winter.

I had seen too many "Dudes" and "pilgrimes" out there making nasty fires- burning metal, glass, used TP and other garbage.

Fires too big- with too much unburned wood left, half burned, behind.

Unrooted trees (green wood, too!) shoved into the fire- hearths a foot or more high with old ash and charcoals.

Nasty, dirty. And I left NYC to get away from the pollution.

Then a stove failure had me making supper over a small wood fire one trip. This smells nice! Comforting, too. I made my small cook fire within the larger fire ring and used the wood that others did not deem worthy of their own fires.

Small fire is good. The circumference of a salad plate. And, if I put it in the fire- I burn it up completely. No garbage burned- that I pack out. Then, only a small handful of ashes left behind, scattered off in to the woods.

Small fire wood is good. Just what I can find around and can easily snap with my hands. Pencil thickness to wrist thickness (me- small wrists)

Observed many tragic fires on the news. With all of our interference in supressing fires, too much fuel builds up- result- wild fires on epic scales. Witnessed the clean-up/aftermath of fire on the North Rim Grand Canyon. dead wood on ground being bundled up for removal. I think- I could use that wood- so many camp fires going to be missed!

Does wood burning cause pollution. Hell yes. So does the flatulance of you me cows and the honey bee. And so does my stove.

Want ot be green- go cold camping.

 

[peakbagger]

Woodstrider, you may be interested in this blog, they have a small wood gasifier design that is more efficient than a conventional wood cooking stove.

http://e-woodgasstove.blogspot.com/

 

[woodstrider]

woodburning stove

Woodstrider, you may be interested in this blog, they have a small wood gasifier design that is more efficient than a conventional wood cooking stove.

http://e-woodgasstove.blogspot.com/

Thanks Peakbagger

 

[Stan]

Native Americans were always amazed at the size of fire White Men needed to accomplish the same thing the natives did to survive.

Burning "dead and down" has been accepted practice in many sensitive areas of the Northeast where it otherwise decomposes and composts within a couple decades. Out West the dead trees from forest fires stand, or lay on the ground, intact for many decades so I'm not sure whether "dead and down" is acceptable practice there. Some environments, like the islands off Maine, are so delicate and the topsoil so shallow that campfires are banned in favor of stoves ... though driftwood burned below the high tide line is usually acceptable.

Whatever impact a wood stove or a campfire has on the atmosphere, fire does provide a certain nourishment of the soul that is worth the price. By "nourishment of the soul" I mean the connections shared before a fire: connection with primitive needs, realization that eventually all of our physical essence is reduced to ash, appreciation of the cycle of life itself. Just don't be the one who burned down the National Forest while bathing in this glow.