Wood in PG for the community energy system and solar in Quesnel for hot water.

Dirty energy versus clean energy.

http://www.bcsea.org/learn/news/2010/09/16/quesnel-solar-community

Why not in Prince George?

The Prince George Community Energy System is supposed to be green because it will burn a renewable source of energy, replacing oil and natural gas, while eliminating 1500 tons of GH gases and fine particulates.

In other words, it is less dirty!

If it's not true we have been led by the nose again.

oil and gas pays for itself, everything else is just a waste of time and money.

I am sorry. It does not eliminate greenhouse gases. When one burns wood, one burns wood and it gives off the same amount of CO2 no matter how you burn it, unless you have a CO2 sequestering system.

It is only "green" because of accepting that wood which rots naturally in the forests will give off CO2 as well as methane in the process. The thinking then goes that hastening that process is no different.

So in come the bean counters and the opportunists and they conveniently ignore a couple of things.

1. CO2 in the atmosphere is the same no matter from where the source.

2. The process speeds up the change to CO2 and puts more CO2 in the air over the short term, say over the next 20 years or so when the system is back to equilibrium.

3. The wood that is rotting in the forests is needed to provide nutrients to the forest soils. Without that, tree growth will be compromised - lengthened.

4. Longer tree growing cycles will mean less leaf mass which takes up CO2.

5. Longer cycles will mean less timber to harvest for as long as that is the way forests and their fibre content are managed.

6. Burning wood is not the highest end use of the product. We have a unique situation at the moment with a huge number of dead standing trees which cannot be used for the more traditional applications. However, that too is short lived. So, these plants, from my point of view, will have an economic life of 10 to 15 years. If it is any longer than that and the use will move away from building products where the Carbon content of the wood is sequestered within buildings for a long time and into quick turnaround to fuels because they have become so expensive, then there will be even more CO2 going up in the atmosphere.

One has to look at the whole carbon cycle and account for changing uses in order to determine whether a change is "green" or not. There are many who are incapable of looking at an integrated system and considering all influences to make a truly informed decision. For many the world has become too complex and they simply put blinders on so that they can make simple decisions based on inadequate information.

Ask almost any forester. Forget about City Hall, the Licensees, etc. While Canfor will likely continue, it will be the next generation of Canfor Boards and executives who will have to deal with the situation that was left for them.

No system is perfect. I totally understand that. However, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave do not suffer from the problem of using wood fibre on a massive scale. And that is where we are heading with this.

The key is that there is no plan by the government of how the industry will look like in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. People are building plants that is taking the province in a whole new direction in wood use. People are concerned about HST. I say this is a much larger concern. In essence, these plants are subsidized by the taxpayer and no money is being drawn off to create alternate access to energy. The technology is being created by other, smarter countries who are making the development of the manufacturing capacity an important part of their economic strategy while we are sitting by.

We are already buying the technology from places like Denmark. We complain about China and other countries beating us due to low labour costs while, with a few exceptions, we cannot even compete in the emerging energy technology business.

Hydrocarbon fuels (oil, gas, coal) are assumed to be sequestered below the ground, even below the ocean floor.

If we don't drill for them, dig them up, bring them to the surface and burn them they will remain to be NOT a factor in the green equation.

The growing, decaying and combustion of plants (incl. trees) is a part of an ABOVE the ground cycle. Without human interference this cycle found its own balance during the last hundreds of millions of years until the industrial age began and the human population increased exponentially together with the energy needs to support that.

CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases when originally sequestered carbon is added into the equation, unbalancing it.

Our present level of CO2 in the atmosphere is the highest it has been in the last 800,000 years, as confirmed by ice core samples taken from glaciers whose age is exactly known.

The greenhouse effect is well known and scientifically sound.

Of course one can scoff at and ignore the findings of science and the prove that backs them up.

Why anyone would do that when we rely on science in virtually all other aspects of our lives is a puzzle, unless the motivation is based on financial reasons and/or political expediency.

Perhaps that is why we are falling more and more behind other countries where the science has been accepted and action has been taken.

"If we don't drill for them, dig them up, bring them to the surface and burn them they will remain to be NOT a factor in the green equation."

Well!!!! THAT is the key, isn't it???

BUT, that is not what is happening, and likely could never happen unless we reduce the total use of bio-energy, or carbon based energy no matter where it comes from.

In fact, buying carbon credits does just the opposite. Go ahead, be a fossil fuel hog, buy some carbon credits, and your conscience is clear. You have helped save the world because you know that the money will be put to a good "green" use.

Well, that might be true if it goes to developing and actually implementing the use of non carbon fuels. The can sell carbon credits for the wind farm projects north of the Rockies as well as site C. But selling credits for exchanging one carbon based fuel for another simply does not cut it.

The world's use of oil is increasing, not decreasing. It is even going so far that we have a plant proposed in the Houston area that will create oil from wood.

Then there is Brazil which has cut down vast tracks of forests to develop sugar and corn plantations used to make ethanol. Remove trees, burn them to send CO2 into the air from the previously sequestered C in the wood, and remove the trees at the same time to reduce the plant carbon uptake by moving from trees to annual plants.

And, we must not forget, it also showed the way to use food crops for ethanol production to the extent that the value of the crop increased exponentially, thus increasing the price of food.

I think the saying is, "there is no free lunch".

Yes, the carbon cycle still works, but it has shifted in the last few decades and will do so even more. The consequences are unknown, especially because the control is by corporations and bean counters and they are ignoring much of the science because they see trouble ahead, with an opportunity to feed on the quiet panic developing and the tendency of people to want "positive" solutions in their lifetime.

"Let me live my life the way I want to live it because I deserve it. Let the others take care of themselves. We have always found solutions. The human ingenuity will muddle through as it always has."

Good points, Gus! The oceans have the capacity to absorb some CO2, but this increases the acidity especially of the surface water where all the plankton lives, which needs the light of the sun. An increase in acidity (carbonic acid) has far reaching consequences such as the dying of coral reefs and extinction of species which can not survive in more acidic waters.

The oceans are a source of food for the population of the world and as such essential for mankind's survival.

Well, at this time there is a lot of denial and ridicule about what is happening. That denial hopefully won't turn into desperation sooner than we think!

Ummm -" the environment found its own balance for the last hundreds of millions of years"? So the ice age was a balance? And you say CO2 is the highest in 800,000 years - yet you compare it to "hundreds of millions" years - so hardly a drop, no?