guardian.co.uk:
should you use coal, logs -- or even those briquettes made from waste newspaper that you sometimes see advertised in this very newspaper?
Matthew Modine: Consumed With Guilt
Can we transform from a society of consumers to a culture of sustainability? I think we can because history has shown that the human spirit is capable of so many things. Like going to the moon. Yes, we can.
William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer: Planting Trees and Moving Windmills in Malawi
My grandpa tells me how thick forests once covered our entire country, so dense and dark that a man could lose his sense of time and direction in them. Those forests have now been reduced by more than 80 percent.
Jennifer Schneider: The Politics of Coal: Don't Write Off "Clean Coal" Yet
Energy-related issues are rarely as simple as political debates make them out to be. The debates over "clean coal" are illustrative.
Robin Chase: Fossil Fuel Is the New Slavery: Morally and Economically Corrupt
Ownership of another human being and reaping the benefit of their labor is repugnant. While burning fossil fuels is not as intimately observable or viscerally felt, there is a direct link from our actions to individual suffering.
Next apocalypse? Mayan year 2012 stirs doomsayers - Yahoo! News
Posterous - The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by ema...
17-Pound, 4-Month-Old Baby Denied Health Insurance for Being Too Fat - Children'...
Racist Email Doc Resurfaces as Expert on Glenn Beck | Talking Points Memo
Fireplace Fuel - Compare Prices, Reviews and Buy at NexTag - Price ...
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BioChar of organic wastes, with use of the heat for electricity generation and heating, and the char used for soil enhancement.
Whys is fire an end goal? Shouldn't warmth be the goal?
Pellets stoves and wind stoves in New England.
We have an excess of harvest-able trees here.
Les Otten wants to get Maine off all its fuel oil usage in 5 years and replace it with pellet stoves
and hardwood pellets.
Wood pellets, oil compete for heating
For now, pellets are most-widely available in 40-pound bags and used by homeowners who ... lower heating costs and local spending, according to Les Otten, ...
kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/4823985.htm
The most sustainable combustion fuel is methane (natural gas contains impurities), then methanol or more likely ethanol. These fuels burn clean, producing almost entirely CO2 and H2O.
We should be using biorefinery techniques based on anaerobic digestion to extract the nitrogen content from waste biomass as ammonia for producing urea soil amendments. Otherwise we release NOx emissions into the atmosphere, where they contribute to greenhouse effects.
We should depend on our friends in the bacteria kingdom to break down complex organic molecules into the smallest useful pieces, because their enzymatic pathways are much more efficient than our thermodynamic methods of combustion or pyrolysis.
I use windfall and deadfall--stuff that would get hauled off either for mulch or to the landfill. Even in an urban area, if you have a sharp eye and know when bulk trash pickup day is, you can find plenty to keep you warm.
Firewood grown and cut from a coppiced or pollarded woodlot. Never coal, nor any other fossil fuel. Carbon that is already part of the earth's surface carbon cycle is free in terms of greenhouse gas emissions; burning all other methods of oxidising (rotting, or eating and then digesting) the fuel in vegetaion have very similar results from a chemical point of view, and it doesn't really matter which happens. TheCO2 released will rejoin the atmiosphere, and eventually be reabsorbed by a new plant and turn back into carbohydrate by the magic of photosynthesis. In planetary terms, the hour it takes a log to burn is not significant;y different from the decade it would take that fallen tree to rot, having its carbon released as CO2 that way.,
Fossil fuels, on the other hand, adds carbon to the atmosphere that had been sequestered from the atmosphere millions of years ago. It's the released of old carbon that causes global warming, not the release of carbon in general.
I tried coal some 20 years ago, it and the coal stove wrere very inexpensive compared to other alternatives.
Then I discovered that coal ash poisons the ground and the coal fumes that escaped into my home were leaving a sticky residue that I assumed was unhealthy and probably carcinogenic.
Now have a wood stove, the kind that self-catalyzes by burning very hot, all that comes out the chimney is a little fragrant smoke, mostly hot gas. Deposits no creosote, virtually maintenance-free.
Paperwork hanging around:
- bill piles from credit agencies
- old tax returns that showed income
- DNC and White House unsolicited donations requests
- mailbox fillers from hungry local businesses
- multiple resume variations & job applications
We've been doing really well with solar thermal space heating. Stop burning anything - wood, fossils, cow patties, etc.
Invest now, and be paid for the life of the system (sorry that sounds a little like I am marketing - but it works!)
Sustainable THIS winter??? Since all choices are still available THIS winter, how bout the same used LAST winter. Duh...
dont bother clicking to the article, it only asks the question.
sez he'll answer next week.
Nice work there huffpo
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First Posted: 10- 9-09 01:11 PM | Updated: 10- 9-09 01:14 PM