37 Replies to “We Don’t Need No…”

  2. Carbon Neutral?
    Carbon as a precursor to warming has been debunked. We know it’s simply a trace gas which leftist’s have turned into a taxable boogieman.
    Yet even those who know better, still discuss actions which lessen carbon production.
    They are simply perpetuating a lie.

  4. Because nobody does self righteous stupidity like the looney tunes that make up the Enviro Fruits & Nutters.
    .

  5. greenies may be a problem, but not as much as “GOVERNMENT”, who are the real NME

  6. Don’t trees remove CO2 from the air and give off oxygen, removing them is like removing the furnace filter. also how about habitat destruction and soil erosion. Oh those crazy environmentalists!

  7. So many layers of crazy, it’s hard to know where to start. They make the claim that burning wood is “carbon-neutral”, and burning coal is not. But CO2 molecules don’t carry tiny little tags that identify them as being from the combustion of wood or of coal. Growing plants don’t sift through the CO2 molecules that waft their way, and consume only the “green” ones; they gobble up all they can, because to a plant, CO2 is a scarce resource.

  8. As a stream for waste products this seems to make sense, problem becomes as soon as a waste stream has a vaule its price increases and availability dries up. The idea that a ‘free’ input would remain free when scaled up to real world scales it laughable at best, fraud at worst.
    BC exports quite a bit of wood pellets to china. Made from wood that isn’t milled or waste products of milling. Of course as soon as it becomes profitable to toss full trees into the chipper, the logging trucks will be goign there and the studs to build your home will increase in price.

  9. “Timeless american wetland forest”
    Err no, basically there is no such thing as unprotected first growth timber in the US. At least not of any consequence for this subject
    Forest do not grow well in wetlands aka swamps, ok, they can, but for this purpose they are not harvesting swampland forests that were effectively clear cut or protected by about 1915. the picture shows what is probaby a softwood plantation as used for pulp and paper, though usually the acreages are vaster and there’s no farmland around because the land isn’t suited to farming.
    That being said wood pellets aren’t a bad way to burn wood, but doing it generate something other than heat is madness.
    As a home heating solution it’s pretty good. $/btu I’d do it in a heartbeat if i were building a house.

  10. Given that the processing plant uses electricity, 50% of which in North Carolina is from coal-fired generators, and that chainsaws use gasoline, trucks and ships use diesel how much fossil fuel is being used for this ‘carbon neutral’ fuel?

  11. I’m so old I remember when environmentalists used to spike trees to protect them from chainsaws, chain themselves to logging trucks, or lay down in the roads to protect trees. Now they’re manning the chainsaws themselves.

  12. Some people are smarter than others.
    Sweden imports waste from European neighbors to fuel waste-to-energy program
    Posted on October 7, 2013 by districtenergy
    When it comes to recycling, Sweden is incredibly successful. Just four percent of household waste in Sweden goes into landfills. The rest winds up either recycled or used as fuel in waste-to-energy power plants.
    Burning the garbage in the incinerators generates 20 percent of Sweden’s district heating, a system of distributing heat by pumping heated water into pipes through residential and commercial buildings. It also provides electricity for a quarter of a million homes.
    According to Swedish Waste Management, Sweden recovers the most energy from each ton of waste in the waste to energy plants, and energy recovery from waste incineration has increased dramatically just over the last few years.
    The problem is, Sweden’s waste recycling program is too successful.
    Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency said the country is producing much less burnable waste than it needs.
    “We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration,” Ostlund said.
    However, they’ve recently found a solution.
    Sweden has recently begun to import about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the rest of Europe per year to use in its power plants.
    http://www.districtenergy.org/blog/2013/10/07/sweden-imports-waste-from-european-neighbors-to-fuel-waste-to-energy-program/

  13. “Drax and Enviva insist this practice is ‘sustainable’.”
    Another prima facia case to be made here, but I can’t afford the time to deal with idiotic bureaucrats. We are well and truly on the road to extinction if we allow these experts to continue in these positions of authority.

  14. why not wood from;
    Ikea suppliers?
    rainforest deforestation?
    Oilsands open mines?
    pine beetle wastelands?
    forest fire remains?
    leftover shipping pallets?
    residential construction waste?

  15. The “lunacy” expressed in this article is reciprocal and threefold –
    1) The Gaia disciple complaining here is under the false impression forests never over-grow then decay, burn, or are consumed naturally and regenerate naturally. Of course the natural “harvest” of forests has the same greenhouse gas load than if it was utilized or managed. Lightning strike forest fires account for more atmospheric carbon than vulcanism – and the dead decaying forest matter and the life forms which feed on the arboreal bio mass account for much of the greenhouse gas production (yes bacteria, termite, ant and higher forms of leaf-eater farts create megatons of methane). So he is FUBARed from point-one if he thinks forests are perpetual and the forest biomass is carbon neutral. Forests are carbon based and when they decay or are consumed that carbon disburses whether it benefits mankind or not.
    2) It’s good to see the UK engaging in renewable bio fuel thermal but they should feel guilty about the out dated technology. They really need to refit those steam making furnaces with the newest wood gas/coal gas high-efficiency furnaces (like they use in Scandinavia) which consume 99.7% of the fuel mass as converted energy production – lower smoke stack CO2 emissions than inefficient Nat gas and virtually no particulate emission. You can also get nearly the same kilowatt output with lower grade fuels like used paper products or sorted municipal garbage. Cost effective and a fully renewable fuel source – wood pellets are a viable renewable fuel IF used in high efficiency gasification furnaces with exhaust capture and reburn. Pellets are made from the processing refuse (sawdust) of trees harvested for building purposes making the utililzation of forest harvest 100% or from pulp trees (weed species trees like spruce and poplar) which regenerate quickly. Win-win IMHO, this tech should be replacing costly Nuke and polluting old fashioned coal plants as a clean, safe, cost effective energy technology.
    3) I love the stark hypocrisy of a dead-tree media org. complaining about trees being used for a higher purpose of efficient renewable energy production rather than squandered in a one-shot application to deceive the public as print fodder for their purposes then thrown in the garbage to rot.
    The technology for clean burn solid fuel energy plants is well advanced with GE and Mitsubishi leading the way, but has been retarded by Big Brother interference with unfounded “carbon” science/taxing hysteria. Gotta wonder if the climate scaremongering is being funded by industries who will loose big when gasification tech. reaches peak efficiency.

  16. “Drax and Enviva insist this practice is ‘sustainable’.”
    Forget ‘Space Ship Earth’, We are now all Easter Islanders…

  17. That’s still going on. Remember the furore over the Great Bear Rainforest?
    It’s ironic that the green slime see nothing wrong in campaigning vigorously to protect what they call rainforests and yet are entirely supportive of burning down others to make electricity.
    N60, if we didn’t have such insane, green-inspired regulations prohibiting it we wouldn’t have any landfill problems at all, just like Sweden and Denmark. Instead the NthAm greens insist that all waste has to be “recycled”.
    Don Morris said it best; nuclear power makes all of this raping of the landscape unnecessary.

  18. Oz, I don’t blame the owners of Drax and Enviva for this. They are simply doing what the government told them to do. “Burn wood or you’re out of business, and don’t criticise us while you’re doing it.”

  19. They could do it without insisting it’s sustainable.
    Critiquing is one thing, cheerleading is another.
    Anyone who uses the word ‘sustainable’ is betraying their Green bias credentials.
    The practice is sustainable? If every power plant in the world, now and in future, burned tree pellets, would the practice be sustainable or would the planet become Easter island?

  20. To feed that power plant at a usage of 7 million tons of wood per year,they are going to have to clearcut 35,000 acres minimum,and that’s going by B.C. forests,in other areas the wood per acre is probably sparse by comparison.
    35,000 acres (to mock the MSM here) is the size of four million football fields, the State of Rhode Island, or the Nation of Zimbabwe.
    But really,it’s about 55 square miles. I’m going to go all Greenie here,but that is way too much to supply just ONE lousy power plant, in the Islamic Republic of England. They can get their wood from elsewhere, and I would lead the marching activists who would block sales of our timber to that project!
    Gotta work on a chant,don’t think ,”power to the people ” would be appropriate.

  21. “..nuclear power makes all of this raping of the landscape unnecessary..”
    Sounds like someone has been into the Koolaid. The forest harvesting pictured above is a Southern US privately owned plantation and is in timber likely less than 30 years old. it would have been harvested regardless of UK carbon mandates. The distortion comes from an exaggerated price for pellets reflecting mandates. Paying 2 to 3 times the cost per MJoule over that of Coal located in close proximity of the UK plant is just another unnecessary cost of green theocracy.

  22. “Drax and Enviva insist this practice is ‘sustainable’.”
    It is. It will sustain the CEO’s and other executive’s positions through the next several quarterly reports at least. That is what matters to the folks in charge at Drax and Envira.

  25. Don
    35000 acres is just what they would have to harvest every year in a temperate forest such as the BC Northern Interior or Boreal forest. With their rotation ages of 80 to 100 years, that equates to at least a 2.8 million acre forest dedicated to just that plant. Vancouver Island is the most productive forest site of any area in Canada and that volume would account for half of its annual production.

  26. It becomes even more ridiculous when one considers the amount of bunker C used in the ships to haul the wood pellets. The greenies probably never thought of that or conveniently ignored it like they do with most externalities that don’t support their dogma.

  27. That time when we laughed at greens for turning off the electricity to light candles and bonfires and then David Cameron did it.

  28. Yes,I worked on Vancouver Island for the BC Forest service,there was a plantation we were shown that grew to harvestable size in only thirty years.
    All the best timber was taken from Vancouver Island before I was there in the 1970’s.The loggers used to talk about the “big trees” they cut in the fifties, though I saw many of those huge off-highway logging trucks loaded to the hilt with only half a dozen trees.
    But in the Prince George region ,where I also worked for the BCFS, it was damned near impossible to get a plantation started,with survival rates in the 10%-50% range being normal, then,as you say, it takes about 80 years to grow a harvestable crop in that region.
    Your figure of 2.8 million acres is probably optimistic.
    And all that just for ONE lousy power plant in Merrie olde. Did anyone calculate the logistics of supplying this thing before they built it?

  29. As Al inOttawa and North of 60 say, the stupid it burns,the “fossil Fuel” burned to harvest and then get these pelletized forests to England.would be more than adequate to fuel the Drax station.
    When you get less energy from your alternate energy, than the hardware and harvesting consumes, you are probably a climate activist.

  30. Environmentalism. Is just a religious cult that thinks mankind are small gods who think they can make a World in their Image.
    They derive a sense of superiority as self appointed warriors of an imaginary Planetary intelligence.
    Every thing they plan or touch turns to sludge. Brings more alarming damage. Yet these folks think of themselves as saints.
    When in reality they do more harm to the Earth than people actually working on it.
    Thee is a solution though. create a vast open reservation. Put these folks on it without any technology, or aglow any. Than they can live like their sacred ancestors.
    No machine products for you, including heaters in winter.Use a stick to plant your crops.

  31. Juxtapose this against the actions of those progressive types in the bay area who have banned wood burning stove use to enhance the environment there. LOL.

  32. A lot of dead trees from the pine beetles are on the mountainsides in BC.
    I’m gathering it’s too costly to harvest them.

  34. Not so much a cost to harvest them, it’s the greenies throwing hissy fits over putting in logging roads. I wish I was kidding.

  35. Beetle killed wood is only viable for dimension lumber for about two years, as pulp a little longer,maybe three years, as for making pellets I don’t know how long it’s good standing, but it starts to turn “punky” pretty quickly not even good for firewood after seven years. Climate does affect the quality if the wood as well, so in wetter climates it might be good for longer.
    The reason why the Bowron River clear cut was done so quickly and dramatically was that we had to get the wood out while it was still good for dimension lumber, the most valuable byproduct. We took 15 years AAC and compressed it into three years,but most of the good wood was utilized.Afterward, we had a spectacular forest fire to burn up the rest.
    The advantage we had was it’s a fairly small area,roads were already in to much of it,there’s a good flat valley to push roads in,and most of the equipment was there in the PG Region ready to be utilized. The Mountain Pine Beetle wood is scattered for hundreds of miles,and while each Forest District did what they could,there wasn’t the market anymore,or the equipment in place to harvest that much wood.
    The English are welcome to their power fantasies, but I don’t care to send them any of our wood for their foolishness. Cut down all the trees in England first.

  36. International trade in strange ultra subsidized products
    leaves lots of room for “financially adroit adjustments”
    and “needed commissions”.
    Once ordered up a small scarce obsolete part for something:
    Five sequential layers of packing offered assurance that
    it had been made as required under the laws and only in
    the named country w, (oops country x), (oops country y),
    (oops country z), and finally the truth will out, “Made
    in Japan” on the part and final inner packing.

  37. ” not even good for firewood after seven years.”
    ..somewhat longer than that with spruce beetle killed trees in drier Northern areas like the Yukon. Beetle kill from 1990 is still being harvested for fuel wood, and a 2-3 MW plant to utilize the beetle kill is planned.

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