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> I think the implication is that it's not necessarily better than coal because burning forests is only carbon neutral on a very long time scale. I find this a

by nuerow 5y ago

> I think the implication is that it's not necessarily better than coal because burning forests is only carbon neutral on a very long time scale. I find this assertion to be very hard to believe. Biomass is the epitome of a renewable energy source. You gather dead vegetation or chop down trees, you burn them to generate power, you plant them again and wait for it to grow. Rinse and repeat. Coal is the exact opposite. Moreover, biomass implies recovering carbon from the atmosphere, while coal implies digging it out of the ground and dumping it into the atmosphere. Care to present any evidence or rationale that supports your claim and lends it any credibility? I suspect that what makes your claim utterly unbelievable is making the mistake of succumbing to a kind of "slippery slope" argument, where you feel the need to go a all-or-nothing route and extrapolate what it would take to scale biomass to provide the totality of Al energy needs. In reality, biomass is scaled the other way around: project how much biomass can be realistically provided by a managed forrest, and adjust the biomass plant to meet it's needs.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Renewable is a misnomer that goes back to the early environmentalist movement. In those days the concern was about running out of energy resources, not climate change. Today we’re drowning in energy, but have a surfeit of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We should Chuck the “renewable” nomenclature from the discourse as fast as possible. We don’t care about renewable we care about carbon neutral. Nuclear is non-renewable but carbon neutral, which makes it far superior to wood which is renewable but carbon spewing.
- someguydave 5y ago
  Nuclear fission actually is somewhat renewable in the sense that you can recycle most spent fuel through a breeder reactor and reuse it.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > Renewable is a misnomer that goes back to the early environmentalist movement. In those days the concern was about running out of energy resources, not climate change. Today we’re drowning in energy, but have a surfeit of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I'm sorry but your post reads like a non-sequitur on semantics, and I fail to see how it adds anything to the discussion. Biomass is renewable in any of the senses you discussed: in the sense of replenishing energy sources, and in the sense of not contributing to emissions as it's role in the carbon cycle is closed.
- uuidgen 5y ago
  Nuclear is good. Wood is carbon-neutral. We should use both to move ASAP from gas and coal. Especially that wood is easier to use in some existing coal furnaces. And if you think that burning wood is carbon-spewing, then thin about what happens in all those forests once the trees age - they either get logged and used for construction, afterwords they get discarded and rot or they don't get logged, collapse and rot. Either way carbon is getting back into the air as CO2.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    This is true on the scale of decades, but the problem with climate change is we don't need carbon neutrality for O(50 years). We need carbon neutrality today. Yes maybe those forests would eventually release carbon in 2050 is all well and good, but very likely we'll have total clean tech solutions by then anyway. In contrast we only have a short window to reduce atmospheric carbon substantially to prevent significant warming by the end of the century. To the extent possible if we can keep carbon sequestered today and pay by having it released in 30 years that's a very good deal. Because it stops the runaway warming today, and it gives us three decades of investment to start sequestering atmospheric carbon.
    - uuidgen 5y ago
      But now a lot of infrastructure runs on coal. You can use wood instead and have this carbon captured and reused in the next 10 years or you can still burn coal while awaiting a perfect solution. We have surplus of farmland due to farm efficiency. We have more forests in EU now than we had 10 years ago. Switching to biomass is a good step because every ton of wood that emits CO2 that will be recycled is better than 0.6-0.8 ton coal that gets burned now and adds carbon.
7952 5y ago
That is logic that works at a local and individual level but breaks down at a global and economic level. Think of it like fish stocks. A small pond can be managed by an individual to make sure that stock levels are renewable. You are careful to not over-harvest. But an individual fishing boat at sea does not have the same control, because other boats are fishing the same waters. The fish are only renewable if there is collective effort to ensure that.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Oceanic fish stocks are a commons, and suffer from the tragedy of the commons you describe. The way I see it, modern day forests aren't, they have a clearly assigned owner.
  - 7952 5y ago
    But the atmosphere is!
i_am_proteus 5y ago
>Care to present any evidence or rationale that supports your claim and lends it any credibility? I am describing the text of the article these comments respond to. If you have not read the article, that would be my first recommendation. I will now expose the flaw in your argument: >biomass implies recovering carbon from the atmosphere Cutting down a tree and burning it releases carbon into the atmosphere. Planting a new tree removes carbon from the atmosphere. However, during the period between clear-cutting old-growth forest and waiting for new biomass to capture carbon out of the atmosphere, the process results in net carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If one were to plant new forests on a hypothetical plot of currently-fallow land, wait for those trees to grow, and then harvest those trees, it would indeed be carbon neutral. But trees take time to grow. Other forms of biomass operate on much faster time scale and don't have this particular problem.

by nuerow 5y ago

dcolkitt 5y ago

Renewable is a misnomer that goes back to the early environmentalist movement. In those days the concern was about running out of energy resources, not climate change. Today we’re drowning in energy, but have a surfeit of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We should Chuck the “renewable” nomenclature from the discourse as fast as possible. We don’t care about renewable we care about carbon neutral. Nuclear is non-renewable but carbon neutral, which makes it far superior to wood which is renewable but carbon spewing.

someguydave 5y ago
Nuclear fission actually is somewhat renewable in the sense that you can recycle most spent fuel through a breeder reactor and reuse it.
nuerow 5y ago
> Renewable is a misnomer that goes back to the early environmentalist movement. In those days the concern was about running out of energy resources, not climate change. Today we’re drowning in energy, but have a surfeit of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I'm sorry but your post reads like a non-sequitur on semantics, and I fail to see how it adds anything to the discussion. Biomass is renewable in any of the senses you discussed: in the sense of replenishing energy sources, and in the sense of not contributing to emissions as it's role in the carbon cycle is closed.
uuidgen 5y ago
Nuclear is good. Wood is carbon-neutral. We should use both to move ASAP from gas and coal. Especially that wood is easier to use in some existing coal furnaces. And if you think that burning wood is carbon-spewing, then thin about what happens in all those forests once the trees age - they either get logged and used for construction, afterwords they get discarded and rot or they don't get logged, collapse and rot. Either way carbon is getting back into the air as CO2.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  This is true on the scale of decades, but the problem with climate change is we don't need carbon neutrality for O(50 years). We need carbon neutrality today. Yes maybe those forests would eventually release carbon in 2050 is all well and good, but very likely we'll have total clean tech solutions by then anyway. In contrast we only have a short window to reduce atmospheric carbon substantially to prevent significant warming by the end of the century. To the extent possible if we can keep carbon sequestered today and pay by having it released in 30 years that's a very good deal. Because it stops the runaway warming today, and it gives us three decades of investment to start sequestering atmospheric carbon.
  - uuidgen 5y ago
    But now a lot of infrastructure runs on coal. You can use wood instead and have this carbon captured and reused in the next 10 years or you can still burn coal while awaiting a perfect solution. We have surplus of farmland due to farm efficiency. We have more forests in EU now than we had 10 years ago. Switching to biomass is a good step because every ton of wood that emits CO2 that will be recycled is better than 0.6-0.8 ton coal that gets burned now and adds carbon.

7952 5y ago

That is logic that works at a local and individual level but breaks down at a global and economic level. Think of it like fish stocks. A small pond can be managed by an individual to make sure that stock levels are renewable. You are careful to not over-harvest. But an individual fishing boat at sea does not have the same control, because other boats are fishing the same waters. The fish are only renewable if there is collective effort to ensure that.

phreeza 5y ago
Oceanic fish stocks are a commons, and suffer from the tragedy of the commons you describe. The way I see it, modern day forests aren't, they have a clearly assigned owner.
- 7952 5y ago
  But the atmosphere is!

i_am_proteus 5y ago

>Care to present any evidence or rationale that supports your claim and lends it any credibility? I am describing the text of the article these comments respond to. If you have not read the article, that would be my first recommendation. I will now expose the flaw in your argument: >biomass implies recovering carbon from the atmosphere Cutting down a tree and burning it releases carbon into the atmosphere. Planting a new tree removes carbon from the atmosphere. However, during the period between clear-cutting old-growth forest and waiting for new biomass to capture carbon out of the atmosphere, the process results in net carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If one were to plant new forests on a hypothetical plot of currently-fallow land, wait for those trees to grow, and then harvest those trees, it would indeed be carbon neutral. But trees take time to grow. Other forms of biomass operate on much faster time scale and don't have this particular problem.