Right on!

If someone could explain to me how burning a carbon based fuel such as wood can reduce the supposed carbon footprint I will accept this. Until that forget this BS.

All this does it preserves the sequestered carbon oil, gas, and coal for later use. Same amount of carbon dioxide going into the air.

But hey, if it makes people feel good, I guess that is the main thing.

I wish people would put as much effort into developing solar, wind and thermal energy sources then we could talk about making a difference to our environment.

I don't know why everyone is worried about C02. It's a gas necessary for plant growth and it has no effect on the so called "global warming" now being referred to as "climate change".

I commend the Quesnel district for making an effort to save money but it won't have much of an effect on the climate. It will just make them look good in the eyes of the environmentalists and off course, the politicians will say, It is the carbon tax that made them do it and how great we are for making this happen. What a pile of BS.

Scientists are overwhelmingly persuaded that global warming is caused by humans - some 84% blame human activity. A strong majority - some 70% - also believe it is a very serious problem. Despite that degree of consensus, some 35% of Americans continues to believe - wrongly it turns out - that climate change remains a matter of scientific controversy. Only about 47% of the public views climate change as a very serious problem, a finding that has remained stable over the years, the survey said. In other public opinion polls over the years, climate change has ranked near the bottom of the list of pressing problems.

The Pew poll, like others in the past, also found attitudes towards climate change breaking down according to political allegiance. Some 67% of Republicans either deny the existence of climate change or attribute the phenomenon to natural causes. In contrast, 64% of Democrats believe that the earth is getting warmer because of human activity.

Gus: "If someone could explain to me how burning a carbon based fuel such as wood can reduce the supposed carbon footprint I will accept this. Until that forget this BS."

Ok, here is the explanation: By not burning the propane gas (in the story above) but instead wood the fossil fuel (propane is a fossil fuel) will not ADD to the already existing CO2 but (and this is the clincher) it can be left underground where it was sequestered many millenia ago.

Diplomat

The ONLY way to stop ADDING to the CO2 in the air is to stop ADDING CO2 to the air, or removing CO2.

Burning wood ADDS to the CO2, no matter what the bean counters who count yesterday's carbon fuels and today's carbon fuels and think there is a difference.

The way to REDUCE the amount of CO2 going into the air is to use non-carbon based energy sources.

At the moment, the best way to remove CO2 from the air on a large scale, as far as I know is to KEEP, vegetation as much as we can rather than REDUCING vegetation and removing natures engine that takes the CO2 in the air and sequesters it.

Thus, the best thing that I am familiar with to do with the wood waste is to make industrial products from it that we sequester into building materials or even burry it deeply so that any methane produced is sequesterd for thousands of years.

I mean, they are pumping CO2 into the ground to force gas and oil from the "pools" in which they are found and thus sequestering the CO2.

Cutting an old tree that has not reached maturity yet and replacing it with seedlings reduces the amount of CO2 uptake by the forest for several decades.

It will take a few more years before people will get wise to the sham perpetrated on us, not about global warming and CO2's role in that, but this whole business that burning wood lets us off the hook. It simply doesn't.

rvuser, its not CO2 they are cutting back on, its CO, NOx, and SO2. All of which are harmful.

Just for the record - the "other system in the Kootenays" is located in Nakusp. It is a community owned system, which contracts with the Elementary School to provide hot water to heat the school.

It's not possible to STOP adding CO2 to the atmosphere altogether. The natural life cycle of forests for instance is a cycle of carbon CO2 release and CO2 acquisition, including naturally occurring forest fires.

But we can reduce the use of already sequestered carbon fossil fuels and start using fuels whch are carbon neutral, such as dead beetle killed wood, of which there is plenty.

If it is allowed to decompose naturally the decomposition process will release CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Of course, as you correctly point out ideally all our energy should come from solar, wind, tidal, wave and geothermal.

Canada is badly lacking behind other countries which are busy making solar panels and wind turbines for their own use and export to Canada.

According to a CBC special Canada's production of solar panels is zero, none.

The whole green initiative is based on efforts on several fronts, which include reduction of fossil fuel and increase of the use of other sources of energy.

Burning dead trees that are available now is an excellent approach to burning fossil fuels which most definitely adds to the overall amount of CO2 and the green house effect.

It is a small step in the right direction, but every step, no matter how small adds up.

This system was pushed forth by an SD 28 employee and brother of R.C., a close contact of Campbell's inner circle. It is not a carbon neutral system being used at Nazko, just a political inner circle junket. Check it out if you don't believe.

Biomass boilers are carbon neutral because the CO2 released by burning the wood is equal to the CO2 absorbed by the tree during its growth.

The system installed at Nazko was manufactured in Austria, where biomass technology is light years ahead of ours, and where most homes have biomass boilers.

In terms of renewable energy, we're a third-world country.

Exactly! And when a new tree grows it will re-absorb the CO2 released by the burning of the other tree.

It's a non-political chemical process.

And what mrlimpet and diplomat fail to mention, the CO2 released by the burning process, is in far excess, by rate ,of what any nearby trees/vegetation can come close to absorbing. Thus the excess goes into the atmosphere. These liberal lovers need to get their facts straight. I'll post scientific research to prove this, if they wish.

Last time I drove through Nazko I saw all those carbon footprints and it really pissed me off!
Carbon foot prints everywhere I looked!!

Burning wood pellets is the way to go, that should teach those 400 logging trucks driving through there a bloody lesson.

I'm so sick and tired of this environmental BS and global warming crap!

:...of what any nearby trees/vegetation can come close to absorbing"

That is not so. Global warming due to the increase of green house gases is a *global* concern, not one of how much *local* growing trees/ vegetation can re-absorb.

Of course if one thinks *local, nearby* then it's not a problem at all locally.

What does it have to do with one's political preference?

"Biomass boilers are carbon neutral because the CO2 released by burning the wood is equal to the CO2 absorbed by the tree during its growth."

It takes 80 years to grow the typical tree harvested here. If we cut that tree down and burn it for school heating, let's say ity takes 80 hours to burn it for heat or electricity and get rid of all the carbon it has sequestered over the 80 years.

It is a simple equation.

If you want to burn wood for energy, the best thing to do is get fast growing wood, which would be something like aspen, cottonwood, etc around here and cut it after about 20 years.

One does no take slow growing wood and waste it for energy unless one has no alternative.

From the linked page below, the reality of the notion of switching to wood for heat and/or other energy sources:

"While there is seemingly a huge inventory of trees in our country, there is also a huge inventory of humans and their respective consumptive wants. Warmth and protection from cold are among the most basic of our human needs – quite simply, there are not enough trees for an annual growth harvest to provide more than a fraction of our current heating needs.

"I don't really expect we will return to heating with wood, but the point of this exercise is to show that if the market should incentivize people to heat with wood, we have upper limits in expanding our use of wood for heating, and THEY ARE NOT TOO FAR FROM WHERE WE ARE NOW."

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5132

Switching to wood because bean counters can separate one type of CO2 from an other type, unlike mother nature, will be doable for a very limited timeperiod measured in a decade or two and then we will have no forests. It will make the Amazon deforestation look like a blip in time.