[Pil-pc-oceania] [Fwd: Is Burning Wood Really A Long-Term Energy Descent Strategy?]

[RussGrayson]

Yes, I found this on Transitionculture too.

The article sates: In a rural situation, where the burning inside a building
is clean and with a flue, the health effects will be minimal. In a situation
in a village, town or city it is not so: ambient levels can rise severely
(for example, in Christchurch, New Zealand, where wood burning is common,
wintertime levels of particulates can become very high, causing an estimated
100 deaths a year and an increase in hospital admissions from respiratory
complaints by 8%). 

It's not only Christchurch. In  a small city where I spent some years -
Launceston, Tasmania - the situation is the same. There, the city is in a
bowl of sorts and, in winter, you get a temperature inversion in which a cap
of dense, cold air forms atop the warmer, lower air. That traps the smoke
and particulates and they accumulate for sometimes longer than a day. It's
the same winter phenomenon as occurs in Sydney, which traps the famous cold
season brown haze over the city.

The article states: An estimated 1.5 to 2 million people die per year
worldwide from indoor smoke, mostly produced from open and unflued fires in
the Œdeveloping¹ world.

This I have seen in the Solomon Islands where women cook over a small, open
fire in a thatched kitchen separate to the house proper. Respiratory disease
is a common occurrence.

Cannot derivatives be processed from wood and burned in a power station to
turn existing electricity turbines and supply cities with electrical energy?
The EROI (energy return on investment of energy) would have to exceed 1:1,
of course, for efficiency in thermodynamic terms.

...Russ


On 19/05/08 7:38 PM, "harry wykman" <harrybw at iinet.net.au> wrote:

> 
> I received this blog post from Rob Hopkin's Transition Culture, which,
> as a student of David Holmgren's when it comes to wood burning, I was
> troubled by:
> 
> http://transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-ene
> rgy-descent-strategy/
> 
> Any responses?
> 
> Harry
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