Quote (SmallBalls @ Sep 21 2020 03:56am)
You're right in that its releasing the same carbon. It's generally seen as more carbon neutral to burn wood because it's easily replaced by planting new trees. Also, the carbon in trees is from a more recent time whereas the carbon in coal was sequestered many thousands of years ago.
As for the carbon monoxide, it reacts with other compounds in the atmosphere and is converted to CO2 fairly quickly.
In generally I wouldnt say biomass, natural gas, or coal are particularly good ways of generating electricity these days.
You've conflated two topics in a way to make most of what you say either false or irrelevant.
1. Burning wood does not emit "the same" carbon as burning natural gas, oil, or coal, it emits MORE. A sizeable amount more. Many times more, when compared with natural gas, specifically, which goes through multiple processes to extract carbon and use it for other things (such as the production of plastic) to specifically prevent burning it in the first place.
2. In a city with 10 million people, if every single person has to heat their home on a dark winter night by burning wood, there's going to be so much carbon monoxide in the air that people will literally get sick and die overnight. That's what pollution was. That's what the EPA was created by the Nixon administration to stop (along with industrial heavy metal dumping and a variety of other equally terrible things). You don't even know what you're talking about.
3. Coal, then oil, then natural gas are successors to wood as sources of heat, power, and fuel. They're successors not because they're "cheaper". Once you remove the environmental regulation, wood's far cheaper than oil or natural gas. And in the US, where only a tiny fraction of the landmass is utilized in the first place, there's plenty enough land. No, other fuel methods are used because they can be used without wholesale murdering any centralized population due to incredibly high pollution levels. The problem when it comes to "clean" energy is that the cleanest is nuclear, but due to meltdown fears, that's not viable. The next is hydroelectric (think dams), which kills fishies, so also bad. Then you get to solar and wind, and the carbon footprint on both is nearly as high as the savings, because of the energy required to produce them, and the energy output is only slightly higher than the input. Add in that they're unreliable sources of power, and you run into rolling blackouts like California has been experiencing the last month or two.
No, I want ACTUAL science. Literally, right now. You simply can NOT promote trash like the GND which promotes destroying the only stable sources of power we have without knowingly and willfully promoting the widespread deforestation of the entire planet just to get people through the winter.
This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Sep 21 2020 05:08am