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I don't have numbers, but huge parts of Montevideo must be relying on wood burning for heating. The effect is very noticeable in the air quality in winter (I've
by dhoe 3y ago
I don't have numbers, but huge parts of Montevideo must be relying on wood burning for heating. The effect is very noticeable in the air quality in winter (I've lived there for three years recently).
- woodisgood 3y agoIs wood not a renewable resource? Closed loop of carbon.
- pxeger1 3y agoThat’s no good if replanting is slower than consumption.
- olddustytrail 3y agoNo, it isn't, but people who run a forestry business obviously plant enough trees to make sure they have enough timber to keep going.
- Angostura 3y agoIt is - but particulates are a massive health issue.
- JR1427 3y agoI totally agree. In the UK, many (often well off) people in towns and cities want to have an open fire or wood stove for fun. It makes no sense for this to be legal in densely-populated areas, that can afford cleaner alternatives.
- JR1427 3y agoWood smoke can also trigger asthma, so roughly 10pct of the population face a potential life-threatening situation from it. https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/triggers.html https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/triggers.html And if the problem is because of your neighbour, there is not a lot you can do about it.
- maccard 3y agoWe moved into a house during COVID and it came with a stove - it was significantly cheaper to run the stove than our gas boiler - £3 roughly for an evening compared to probably £12-15 to heat with the boiler. Across 3-4 months of winter that's an enormous saving
- dazzawazza 3y agoCheaper for you but if you live anywhere near others the cost to the communities health is a lot more. London's air is often terrible thanks to wood burning and bloody fireworks! Why we allow this I will never know.
- Ntrails 3y agoI'm gonna stick a "citation needed" here. I have discerned no obvious difference in air quality from wood burners in the winter so unless London has a lot of folks burning wood in the summer I find it unlikely. As for Fireworks, their usage is so infrequent that I find the idea of "often" slightly confusing. Disclosure, my family had open fires and then log burners for as long as I've been alive. Not in London where I now live. I love a proper fire, it's great, one of the things I enjoy about visiting family in the countryside. I am, however, ambivalent about the things and wouldn't resent them being banned.
- fullstop 3y ago> As for Fireworks, their usage is so infrequent that I find the idea of "often" slightly confusing. Not in the context of London, but I live near an amusement park and they launch fireworks every weekend while the park is in season. I don't smell or notice any difference in air quality except for after the 4th of July when they launch a lot more of them.
- hermitdev 3y agoYou're probably not noticing any odors from your local municipal fireworks because they launch them quite a bit higher into the air than your typical neighbor is going to be sending their firecrackers and bottle rockets, making it someone else's problem. The reason industrial smoke stacks are as tall as they are is to get the smoke away from the immediate vicinity/surface.
- t-3 3y agoYou can burn wood cleanly and very efficiently, so why not just ban inefficient stoves rather than wood burning in general? A TLUD isn't going to be any worse for your health than a gas-burning stove or furnace.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoWe should be (and are) banning those as well though, because they're bad for your health and bad for the wider communities health.
- brtkdotse 3y agoOur neighbour has a modern, top-of-the-line, highly efficient wood boiler. Still makes the area smell like a parking garage for a couple of hours each day during winter.
- scott_siskind 3y agoIt's not just about the stove. It's also about the state of the wood you're burning (humidity mostly). Very dry wood burns much more cleanly than less dry wood.
- Angostura 3y agoIn that case they aren't operating it correctly.
- Angostura 3y agoIt depends very very much on the desihgn of the stove and how they are run. DEFRA in the UK has just upped the required standard of stoves that can be installed in smokeless zones. The best ones have very low emissions.
- adrianN 3y agoDepends on where the word comes from I would say
- esteth 3y agoIf we cultivate trees, then remove them from the earth and atomize them into the air, then plant more trees, they're a renewable resource but it's still causing climate change.
- suoduandao2 3y agoI don’t understand. There’s no net increase or decrease of atmospheric carbon in the scenario you describe
- yakubin 3y agoCO2 doesn’t disappear from the atmosphere the moment you plant trees. In fact, burning wood is worse than burning coal here, because, for the same amount of energy provided, burning wood is going to emit more CO2 than burning coal.
- ponector 3y agoIs it? Energy output is directly related to carbon content. More energy density from coal mean more co2. But coal is much much worse due to toxic pm2.5
- yakubin 3y ago> Energy output is directly related to carbon content. More energy density from coal mean more co2. No. It means you need to burn a larger volume of wood to get the same amount of energy. And when you increase the volume, you increase the emissions. The first sentence of this quote may be true, if we are talking about absolute amounts, but then in the second sentence density is a ratio (energy to volume), which is why it’s not true. I don’t know all that much about relative PM2.5 emissions, but a brief search shows a paper, which argues that PM2.5 emissions depend more on combustion conditions than fuel type[1]. [1]: <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31340411/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31340411/>
- 3y ago
- manc_lad 3y agoUsing the same logic, you could say coal is renewable depending on your time horizon, no?
- suoduandao2 3y agoNo, fungi evolved that can digest lignin now ;). On a less facetious note, Solar needs time to renew the energy it made the day before as well. Time scale is very important to questions of renewables, and people have been sustainably burning wood for a long time. Unsustainably too, but I would bet that’s not the case here if it’s being included in a census of sustainable sources.
- skrause 3y agoTechnically coal is also a closed loop of carbon because the CO2 once came from the atmosphere. Which brings us to the problem: The CO2 shouldn't be in the atmosphere right now: If you burn wood today and the CO2 gets removed again by new plants within the next 100 years, that's still a problem.
- ajuc 3y agoCoal is not a renewable resource because bacteria and fungi evolved to decompose wood before it turns into coal. That's why almost all coal comes from (nomen omen) Carboniferous Period.
- skrause 3y agoThat's kind of missing my point. I obviously know that coal is not renewable. The point was: When you burn wood today the atmosphere isn't going to be like "oh, but that CO2 was absorbed out of the atmosphere during the last 100 years, so that CO2 shouldn't contribute to global warming". As long as we haven't solved climate change any CO2 released into the atmosphere should be avoided. It's okay to burn wood that would have rotted anyway. But if you cut down a healthy forest, burn it and say "but it will be reabsorbed when the forst grows back, it's a closed loop" that's technically correct, but it still contributes to global warming because we now have additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Simply because it takes time for a forest to grow. The closed loop argument is only really valid long term and when we've already solved climate change.
- Emma_Goldman 3y agoA fun theory, but it's wrong. The likely explanation is tectonic: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-ancient-forests-formed-coal-and-fueled-life-as-we-know-it https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-ancient-fo...
- jiehong 3y agoIsn't coal the result of a massive accumulation of plant matter that couldn't be digested by any organism? But then, once the current mushrooms and bacteria manage to digest it, there is no way for it to accumulate again like that. Petrol might be a different story, coming from the plankton falling at the bottom of the sea instead.
- cultureswitch 3y agoIt's a renewable resource but burning wood for energy causes much worse environmental issues than climate change.
- notachatbot123 3y agoTheoretically maybe (ignoring all the other effects of burning wood and the time spans one has to consider), but globally we have a massive deforestation and loss of trees so it is sadly not a reasonable option.
- t-3 3y agoHow do you expect to prevent deforestation if there is no economic value to keeping the forests? People, in general, don't object to deforestation because it's 'productive' - it's building things, making jobs, making money. If deforestation was destroying a valuable resource that provides heat and energy for your community, you would absolutely not allow it, and definitely not support it.
- hardlianotion 3y agoIn the long run, perhaps. Depending on the rate of tree replacement of those used as fuel.
- infecto 3y agoyeahhhhh....it is but I think when framing energy independence and renewables its a good call out to note if homes are heating with electricity or burning fuels.
- pohl 3y agoThere’s probably not a simple yes/no answer, but rather a function of the rates of both planting and harvesting trees, unless one is pedantic about the distinction between able-to-be renewed and actually renewed, which is useless in the context of our climate issues.
- Mrdarknezz 3y agoYes but it's not sustainable, kinda defeats the purpose
- gen220 3y agoIt is, and can be done sustainably. But only in conjunction with (1) good harvesting / forestry practices (2) good wood "processing" [i.e. drying] practices (3) good insulation in the homes that use wood for heat (4) good wood-burning stoves and filters. The Nordics, perhaps unsurprisingly, are the lead innovators in this space.
- forinti 3y agoMontevideo in the 80s and 90s had really old Leyland diesel buses that polluted like hell. The buildings on 18 de Julio were black with soot. It is much much better now.
- z_killemall 3y agoActually using fireplaces for heating has became more of a luxury than a need in Montevideo during the late years, as firewood costs have skyrocketed as well as air conditioning has quickly became by far the cheapest way of heating.
- dhoe 3y agoWood is the main source with a margin: https://www.ambito.com/uruguay/con-el-precio-la-lena-aumento-como-se-calefaccionan-los-hogares-n5724281 https://www.ambito.com/uruguay/con-el-precio-la-lena-aumento...
- kelnos 3y agoI assume you mean heat pumps? "Air conditioning" usually refers to cooling, not heating (even though the words don't actually need to mean that).
- leonheld 3y agoHey, I have a question for you (I'm assuming you know Europe/US): are the houses in Uruguay built to the same insulation standards as houses in northern/central Europe, for example? I live in southern Brazil and I have yet to realize why we don't give a shit about proper insulation/modern heating techniques. Burning wood for heat in badly insulated homes drives me in-sa-ne during the winter months, terrible for my asthma.
- FredPret 3y agoInsulation is expensive and it's hard to be the first homeowner to install it - because when you sell your house, the next buyer has to pay a premium for your insulated house, which means they have to be convinced of the merits of insulation and be able to pay for it. Countries that have both the money and the investment-friendly culture to insulate their houses tend to be the rich ones.
- kelnos 3y agoIsn't it worthwhile enough to the current owner, in the form of a lower utility bill during the winter?
- FredPret 3y agoIt depends on the pay-off period. This is determined by heating costs, the insulation costs, and the interest rate. It could take many years to pay for some kinds of insulation.
- Trufa 3y agoI'm Uruguayan and have lived in Europe (Austria) for many years, no, the isolation standards are not even close but you don’t quite need them as much. Wood burning is becoming a rare thing here tho.
- ggambetta 3y agoThe coldest winters of my life were growing up in Uruguay, where it rarely gets to 0 degrees in winter. And I say this having lived in London and currently living in Switzerland. That says a lot about the quality of insulation in Uruguay :(
- dep_b 3y agoIf it's anywhere the same as in Argentina, it's horrible. Single pane glass, walls made out of a single file of large, hollow bricks, maybe some insulation on the roof but not that much.