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Ed Darby? Abraham Darby I around 1709 modified the blast furnace that had already been evolving for over a millenium, to consume coke instead of charcoal as the source of carbon that formed the carbon monoxide used to reduce raw iron oxide to pig iron, the starting point for other iron products. Charcoal gave a purer iron product, but making coke from coal proved much cheaper than making charcoal from harvested trees, by then a scarce commodity. For both charcoal and coke, a main byproduct was/is CO2 gas from the finally oxidised carbon, released into the atmosphere. The cheaper Darby coke method, later improved, caught on rapidly: a gnomic irony of this is that while saving some of the CO2-consuming much diminished forests from approaching extinction, it led rapidly to much greater iron production via burning fossil carbon that underpinned the Industrial Revolution in Britain, which in turn led to ever increasing CO2 emissions, eventually worldwide.
On a lesser point not covered by reporter Aaron Beswick's article in the C-H that Dave referred to, if you had tried to get a few cords of 16" cut firewood for your wood stove in early 2015, as we did, you would have found that initially, none of the local suppliers around Halifax could get any logs, because they believed that such wood that had been harvested was nearly all going directly to Point Tupper biomass monster, because that had been built too large for the available supply of so-called 'waste' wood and bark. Central planning at its very best. Our supplier eventually got some logs from New Brunswick, but the price went up considerably.
Steve
________________________________________
From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] on behalf of David & Alison Webster [dwebster@glinx.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 7:12 PM
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry
Hi Nick & All, Dec 23, 2015
I have only few minutes so will deal with the "gnomic" question first and return later to the rest.
It was a new word to me so I had to consult a dictionary which referred me to sententious= Aphoristic, pithy, given to the use of maxims; (of persons) = fond of pompous moralizing; maxim= A general truth drawn from science or experience.
I think we should both plead guilty to the "gnomic" charge and be flattered. As for the "pompous moralizing"; I am frequently inclined to quote the King James Bible but then remember: "Be not righteous over much, neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?"; Ecclesiastes 7:16; and decide not to.
Merry Christmas All & A Happy New Year
----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Hill<mailto:fernhillns@gmail.com>
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca<mailto:naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry
A friend recently accused me of being "gnomic", and ill-educated lout as i am, i took issue at being called a gnome, but moving into this here case at hand, I think the gnomes have it: "And warning that use of biomass is not green is perhaps already an effective way to indirectly kill trees." Not exactly gnomic but not entirely designed for clarity and explicitness. Then we have: "And if not now, then without doubt in the future." This non sentence leaves us without a doubt in the future waiting with and like Godot for some Christmas clarety.
Seriously, I see Dave's point and Jamie's. England found a way through Edward Darby to stop using beech trees for coking to make steel; Darby figured out how to substitute coal for wood and thank god because England had run out of most decent sized trees and was charcoaling most of its forests. David is right that the first quotation is an overstatement but Jamie's point was most welcome in today's Herald. We not only are running the risk of losing good forest but we are running down our forest soils so that tree regrowth is poor, forest composition is weedy, wildlife suffers, and the carbon balance (ie. that less carbon dioxide is being emitted than would be if we allowed forests to grow and used conventional fossil fuels in the most efficient manner) is questionable. We want to move away from "Green" that is not sustainable for wildlife and I would put biomass and large scale hydroelectric both in that unsustainable class.
Good on David and Jamie, the environmental critic and the advocate.
Merry Christmas guys
Nick
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 2:56 PM, David & Alison Webster <dwebster@glinx.com<mailto:dwebster@glinx.com>> wrote:
Dear All, Dec 23, 2015
There is an article on biomass in today's Chron. Hrld. page A3 "Biomass may be less than green: report". I could not see how to extract a link to this article.
The warning was issued some years ago to "Beware of false prophets" and if this article is at all accurate then Jamie Simpson and Aaron Ward may qualify to some extent.
These biomass plants leave much to be desired and constructive criticism will hopefully lead to better context integration in future but saying that "...the province is not capable of proving that harvesting for biomass is better for the environment than burning coal." is misleading in the extreme.
First of all it is an example of deplorable prose because superficially it would appear to say that burning biomass for power is no better for the environment than burning coal. Unless huge amounts of CO2 are released in the course of cutting, hauling and preparation for burning then the above would be false.
But burning of biomass is not mentioned; only harvesting for biomass is mentioned in that quote. And true enough "harvesting for biomass" uses energy for no purpose if the biomass is not subsequently burned and would not help the environment in any way. And the province, being just an area of land would be unable to prove anything.
Getting back to the heart of this question; when a tree which has fixed carbon for say 100 years is cut down, it is entirely correct that another tree of equal size and carbon content does not spring up to replace it in less than 100 years (unless a faster growing tree is planted). So yes there often is an apparent lag. But if done astutely, say by thinning overstocked trees sufficiently early, then this apparent lag will shrink nearly to zero. And this may be repeated on the same ground two or more times depending upon details.
But what are the alternatives ? If a tree dies and rots in the forest t